Editorial Review

Over the past seven years, in a highly unstable global economy, Cisco doubled revenue, tripled profits, and quadrupled earnings per share. How? By Doing Both. When companies face key strategic decisions, they often take one path and abandon the other. They focus on innovation and new business at the expense of core businesses or vice versa. They stress discipline and sacrifice flexibility. They focus on customers and ignore partners. And they struggle. Cisco believes there is a better way: Doing Both.

Doing Both means approaching every decision as an opportunity to seize, not a sacrifice to endure. It means avoiding false choices, reduced expectations, and weak compromises. It means finding ways to make each option benefit and mutually reinforce the other. In this book, Cisco Senior Vice President Inder Sidhu explains why “doing both” is today’s best strategy. Then, drawing on Cisco’s hardwon insights and the experiences of companies like Procter & Gamble, Whirlpool, and Harley-Davidson, Inder presents a complete blueprint for “doing both” in your organization, too.

Win by Doing Both!

• Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation

• Existing and New Business Models

• Optimization and Reinvention

• Satisfied Customers and Gratified Partners

• Established and Emerging Countries

• Doing Things Right and Doing What Matters

• Superstar Performers and Winning Teams

• Authoritative Leadership and Democratic Decision Making

Reviews

A Living Example of why "Both-And" wins over "Either-Or"
There is evidence showing up everywhere that the "both-and" theory is not only real, but far more powerful than the limiting "either-or" postulate. "Doing Both," by Inder Sidhu is not only strong evidence that it works, but a wider, broader scope for its use.

We've seen parts of the both-and theory at work in business through co-opetition. However, simple collaboration habits often times do not include the factors that influence business success. Some people might think that today's collaborator would more likely be a new college graduate who works for a start-up technology company who uses a BlackBerry to increase personal productivity.

But, there is more to it than that. Both-and is allowing product innovation and the balancing of many seemingly conflicting goals to be maintained within an organization. Profitability is enabled by balancing seemingly conflicting purposes, not by choosing one or the other.

Inder Sidhu addresses multi-evolutionary product development agendas with a very elegant way of "Doing Both" things. Cisco has become a role model of sorts, where workers are empowered with personalized services, choice, and work-life balance in a human network to get their work done and make organizations thrive. The opening analogy on doing both form and function with the Golden Gate Bridge Bridge is very powerful as it became the symbol for Cisco.

Hopefully their example will inspire you to influence your current environment with the expectation that cultural factors influencing collaboration will include role modeling by senior leaders, a formal collaboration process, tools, training and rewards that will work for you.

"Doing Both" provides insight that will help ease the transition from the old management style to this new more profitable one. This book earns 5 stars because it is inspiring, insightful, and most importantly, practical. It is very well written and is fluid as well as engaging. It very proactively makes the both-and theory come across as quite believable and doable.

This book represents some fresh thinking to current business challenges. Definitely worthwhile spending some serious focus time on.

Let me also tell you about another new business challenge that I believe would be just as important spending some good focus time on...it is proactive managing your online reputation. In addition to "Doing Both" I would highly recommend getting Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier.

Even though Cisco is a great company, it still has customer problems ... and you will to. It is inevitable that you will get some bad product reviews, or even worse, revengeful customers who will try to ruin your company's online reputation. Wild West 2.0 tells you exactly where to look for reputation problems and then how to repair them. Internet Reputation Management should not be delegated to your webmaster. From my experience it is now a critical management and marketing issue that concerns everyone from the CEO on down.

Interesting and inspiring


Inder begins with sharing how Cisco's TelePresence video conferencing technology has enabled him to see, hear and almost feel his mother's presence who is 8,000 miles away back home in India. The intro is touching and a friendly reminder of how technology has changed our lives in many ways and most importantly how we stay in touch and always connected.

Inder takes you through the various steps that Cisco has taken to grow to a $40 billion dollar company with over 60,000 employees. Its an interesting read as Inder walks through the history and the strategic decisions made to remain competitive through innovation and bold moves. Inspired by the stories of the background of the leaders chosen, the difficult questions and challenges faced and their paths take to success.

Doing Both is an interesting and inspiring read.

Business wisdom not to be missed
This book hones in on the point that optimal business decisions are not necessarily trade-offs between two choices but usually involve doing both. Written in an engaging, easy-to-read, story-telling style, the book offers numerous examples of how Cisco has been "doing both" to enable its success from multiple angles: technology innovation, market segmentation, supply chain management, organizational design, and more. Inder Sidhu's examples from his personal life are moving and help to make the book quite inspirational. A joy to read.

Unique Insights and Lessons Not To Be Missed
Business books are a "dime a dozen". Fortunately, this book is one that stands apart from the pack. Insightful, thoughtful, compelling and thought provoking, "Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today's Profits and Drives Tomorrow's Growth" takes the reader on a dynamic journey into the inner workings of Cisco and it's remarkable transformation. Inder SIdhu's storytelling is highly entertaining and provides unique insights that today's business leaders must not miss. This book will be one that I highly recommend to my friends and colleagues.

Organizational transformation is not -- repeat not - a zero-sum game

One of the most self-defeating mindsets is suggested by the admonition, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Obviously there are situations when there are two options that are mutually-exclusive. However, most of the time, when facing a choice, it is a mistake to select only one and dismiss all others. Inder Sidhu does not advocate "a balanced compromise between two objectives, but a mutually reinforcing multiplier in which each side makes the other better." He cites comments included in Built to Last (1994) co-authored by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras when discussing a highly visionary company "that doesn't want to blend yin and yang into a gray indistinguishable circle that is neither highly yin nor highly yang; it aims to be distinctly yin and distinctly yang - both at the same time, all the time. Irrational? Perhaps. Rare? Yes. Difficult? Absolutely."

Sidhu devotes the bulk of his lively narrative to explaining how exemplar companies such as Apple, BYD, Cisco, GE, Google, IBM, and Procter & Gamble achieve these strategic objectives:

o Improving the core business while conducting disruptive innovation
o Strengthening current account relationships while adding new ones
o Fine-tuning what is done well while transforming or eliminating what isn't
o Creating customer evangelists while creating steadfast partners
o Thriving on "Main Street" while exploring "the road less traveled"
o Doing it right and doing what is right (i.e. what matters)

Obviously, doing both (of whatever) is not always possible or, when possible, advisable. Also, any lessons learned from the exemplar companies such as those Sidhu examines (especially Cisco) must be modified to accommodate the specific needs and resources of much smaller organizations.

With all due respect to the value of these lessons, I think the single greatest benefit of this book is the mindset it can help its reader to develop. Although Sidhu does not cite them and their books, he has clearly been influenced (albeit indirectly) by business thinkers such as Henry Chesbrough (Open Innovation and Open Business Models) and Roger Martin (The Opposable Mind) as well as Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouilllart (The Power of Co-Creation). Their major recommendations track almost seamlessly with Sudhu's own:

1. Be open-minded to possibilities, whenever/wherever they occur
2. Respect and examine those that are plausible, especially if unorthodox
3. Seek out collaborations that are mutually-beneficial
4. Welcome each "failure" as a precious learning opportunity
5. Juxtapose (for rigorous scrutiny) contradictory ideas and options
6. Embrace change as an ally, not as a threat
7. Achieve constant improvement with a discovery-driven process
8. Welcome and support principled dissent
9. Cultivate and nourish an insatiable appetite for learning
10. Challenge what James O'Toole characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom"

Congratulations to Inder Sidhu on a brilliant achievement.

Insightful Premise
Mr. Sidhu effectively presents the issues faced by Cisco in balancing its interests in maintaining current products, services and markets, and expanding into very different ones. He outlines how Cisco has dealt with avoiding the complacency and inflexibility in maintaining current products, services and markets by expanding into new areas, but simultaneously, avoiding overextending the company.

I thought the anecdotes from the experiences of other businesses were instructive, especially for us non IT types. The example of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge was especially helpful.

The concepts outlined in the book would be helpful to the owner of any business, from a local sole proprietorship to a company such as Cisco.

I higly recommend this book.

... Read more

Editorial Review

The definitive guide on how to prepare for any crisis--from global financial collapse to a pandemic

It would only take one unthinkable event to disrupt our way of life. If there is a terrorist attack, a global pandemic, or sharp currency devaluation--you may be forced to fend for yourself in ways you've never imagined. Where would you get water? How would you communicate with relatives who live in other states? What would you use for fuel?

Survivalist expert James Wesley, Rawles, author of Patriots and editor of SurvivalBlog.com, shares the essential tools and skills you will need for you family to survive, including:

Water:Filtration, transport, storage, and treatment options.
Food Storage: How much to store, pack-it-yourself methods, storage space and rotation, countering vermin.
Fuel and Home Power: Home heating fuels, fuel storage safety, backup generators.
Garden, Orchard Trees, and Small Livestock: Gardening basics, non-hybrid seeds, greenhouses; choosing the right livestock.
Medical Supplies and Training: Building a first aid kit, minor surgery, chronic health issues.
Communications: Following international news, staying in touch with loved ones.
Home Security: Your panic room, self-defense training and tools.
When to Get Outta Dodge: Vehicle selection, kit packing lists, routes and planning.
Investing and Barter:Tangibles investing, building your barter stockpile. And much more.

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It is a must-have for every well-prepared family.

... Read more

Reviews

Not bad, but misses the boat, October 6, 2009
Rawles is a great non-fiction writer, and this is a well written book. However, it has some major faults:

- The book is for hard core survivalists only. It assumes complete and absolute break down of civilization. It does not deal with "simpler" short-term emergencies (tornado, fire, flood) that you can ride out living in your normal urban or suburban environment. The book is practically all about establishing a well-stocked remote rural retreat, which you defend tooth-and-nail against looters and invaders, while keeping the curtains down not to let them see your window lights.

- Rawles preaches to the choir, not to the uninitiated. If you are not familiar with the survivalist vernacular and have not read similar books / blogs, you will find this book a little jarring and over your head. In fact, Rawles often cross-references his fiction novel Patriots as supplementary guide. Speaking of preaching to the choir: all these five stars reviews which are highly rated as helpful - feel free to ignore the ones written before October 2. Given that this book started shipping on the last day of September and is not available for Kindle, there is simply no way people could have received and read the book before Friday October 2. Rawles is known for encouraging his blog readers to all buy the book on the same day to create a "bestseller" effect on Amazon, and this carries over to the reviews. So beware.

- Book is way too tiny and short for much useful learning. In fact, each chapter is basically a thoughtful intro followed by a list of items to get, with some quick facts (e.g. how long honey or wheat can be stored, where to buy the containers, etc). There is barely any attempt to teach survival attitude and skills - those are farmed out to other books or training courses. To the author's credit, he has plenty of great pointers to other books and courses. However, you are much better off going there in the first place.

- Rawles has a misanthropic, dog-eat-dog sense to his writing, both in this book and in Patriots. It is too much about hunkering down in your darkened bunker, eating MREs, and using plenty of ammo to keep the less fortunate souls away. While it is possible that a major event could end civilization as we know it, I do wish Rawles had a more positive tone and attitude, at least when trying to covert newcomers to his cause :)

There is one really big issue with hard core survivalism in general. If a truly massive global or nationwide disaster comes to pass, the likelihood of surviving it is low, no matter how well you prepare. Surviving a nuclear war or a mass epidemic is unlikely, and more about random chance than preparation. The survivors are bound to come together in sizable groups for strength and protection. If a well armed gang or ex-military unit converges on one of the Rawles-style rural retreats, game is over. So at the end of the day, at least to me, hard-core survivalism comes across as a militaristic make-believe game, mostly indulged by paranoid guys. Last but not least, unlike "soft-core" temporary disaster survival, what Rawles recommends is expensive and requires major lifestyle changes, which limits its appeal tremendously.

So, what's good about this book? The chapters on food storage and vehicles stand out. Also, if you are looking for a primer on surviving a major end-of-civilization disaster, this is a great starting point. To the author's credit, his survival blog has more readers than most daily newspapers, so he knows his stuff, whether you agree with him or not.

Overall it's pretty OK, October 9, 2009
I have followed Rawles blog and his writings. This book is pretty OK, and here is why. The book does provoke a lot of thought, but.. Here is where it misses. The situation that Rawles describes, he has not lived through. I still have a rather normal life I have to live and for most of us, ditching it all and moving to the mountains is not a feasible option. He often cites needing a years worth of anything on hand, but what happens after that year? Do you really want to live in a place of constant death and destruction. He lists a lot of doomsday scenarios by where the ones who survive will not be the lucky ones.

I think the much more likely future is similar to what happened in Argentina or what has been slowly happening in South Africa.

So while next spring I will be tilling up a good part of yard for a garden, harvesting rain water, and buying and stocking in bulk. I will not be buying a GOOD location or a buying an old diesel junker truck to get there.

There is a lot you can learn from this book, but don't make it your sole reference. Where you live determines your survival strategy, there is no one size fits all approach.

Read this before you buy, July 27, 2010
First let me start by saying that I seriously debated giving this book either 2 or 3 stars. It's somewhere in the middle in my mind.

As part of my investigation into disaster preparedness, I read four books. I'd like to compare them here to help other customers.

The four books can be divided into two groups: practical guides, and the world's gonna end guides.

The first two books are related to what I'd call likely events - hurricanes, flu pandemics, earthquakes, blackouts, food shortages, water contamination, etc. The two that I read are:

- Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family by Arthur Bradley

- Crisis Preparedness Handbook by Jack Spigareli

These two books are similar in their scope. Neither preaches doomsday preparations and both have a wide range of good advice. Spigarelli's book focuses much more heavily on food storage, whereas Bradley's has a more well-rounded handling of subjects and targets family preparation (including the special needs of children, pets, the elderly, and those with handicaps). Comparing the two, I found Bradley's book to be more recent, easier to read, and more comprehensive. The quality of the publication is also better (numerous clear tables, examples, figures, conclusions, etc.). Spigarelli's book has been around for almost a decade and is highly regarded, but feels a bit dated (text looks almost like it was generated on a typewriter, figures are small, tables are not very clear). Not a bad book at all, just dated, and heavily focused on food storage (about 2/3 of the book). Just to be clear, both books are good.

The second set of books are targeted for more drastic, world-changing events - nuclear world war, asteroid hitting the planet, collapse of all government, doomsday stuff. The two books are:

- How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times by James Rawles

- When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes by Cody Lundin

Again, these two books are similar. Both target extreme preparation - massive food and water stockpiles, getting off the electrical grid, living in bunkers, stocking weapons and bartering supplies, etc. Of the two, I found Lundin's book to offer more. First of all it is much larger and has much more detailed content. Rawles' book is a low-quality trade publication that has zero figures or tables - think text only. The advice of Rawles book is also very general and not particularly useful.

There is some significant overlap between the two types of books, but they are definitely different in their focus. My advice is before buying a book, first decide whether you want to prepare for likely events or doomsday events. For me personally, I found the Practical Handbook for the Family to be the most useful. If you want to prepare for both ends of the spectrum, purchase Bradley's book and Lundin's book. Can't go wrong with that.

Hope this helps!

Covers all the bases, October 2, 2009
As one of the original pioneers in the survival and preparedness field, I have been critical of arm-chair survivalists who lead people astray with bad advice, product recommendations that don't work, and fail to take into consideration the fact that most people just can't head for the hills without destroying their financial lifeline. Self-sufficiency is fairly expensive, takes a lot of skill, and can't be done on a whim.

Jim Rawles' book is not in that category. He has lived everything he recommends, and thus gives the kind of savvy advice that carefully guides a person through the tough choices necessary for contingency planning. Moreover, he is very open about the pitfalls and cautions that readers must avoid in order to develop a successful retreat plan. I found myself agreeing with almost every recommendation he makes.

Highly recommended!

Joel Skousen, Author of The Secure Home, and Strategic Relocation--North American Guide to Safe Places

A reference for further learning., September 30, 2009
This book doesn't cover every detail of every disaster, of course. No one book could. What it has is easily referenced, concise summaries of particular events--hurricanes, earthquakes, brush fires, economic collapses, grid failures--and summaries of preparations one can make. Then, those preparations are roughly described.

All this gives a person or family a handy guidebook to create a disaster plan from.

Obviously, not all disasters have equal probability, nor are relevant to all locations--brush fires and hurricanes don't affect me in the Midwest. Tornadoes, flash floods and blizzards do, as might a New Madrid earthquake. Long term societal problems aren't currently a problem in the US, but are in quite a few other western nations, such as Argentina and sometimes Chile. There's even advice on a checklist to prioritize exactly those issues.

As usual, a lot of the negative reviews revolve around a provincial "it can't happen here" mindset. A given disaster might not be likely in your current location at your current time, but places, people and societies change. Preparing ahead costs little, and can save your life. If you never need it, think of it as insurance.

Interesting, but niche appeal, October 14, 2009
I purchased this book with an open mind. I can say that my purchase was motivated mostly out of respect to the author for his previous work and his blog. I tried to read this book with the only expectation that I would walk away from it with one or two pieces of useful knowledge more than what I started with. At the end of the day, I felt slightly cheated. Let me list some of the biggest flaws with this work so people can be aware of what they need to address if they are looking at this as a resource material.

1. I am really not sure who is the real audience for this book. After finishing it last night, I concluded that most of the 5 star WOW feedback did NOT read the book before they posted their reviews. I guess if you live on 20 acres in the country 5 miles away from your closest neighbor then a lot of the over view sections in this book are for you.
2. The book is written with a very pessimistic tone that leaves the reader with a sense of helplessness if he lives with in a city or greater metropolitan area. I live in a city and because of my job I am unable to leave for the country. I think this was the greatest mental hurdle when confronted with this work. If you are unable to commit to a change of location and life style, then reading this book almost feels like a waste of time. Tell me something I can use for city survival as my home, family, job and life have all taken place inside of a society.
3. Lots of the specific reference areas into subjects that are of great interest (canning, strengthening the defenses of your home, essential home gardening on less than an acre, and the firearms questions) differ to other works by name only. I was rather upset with the feeling that I had just read a survival appendix when many of the real questions I had were just glossed over and left me confused. I know that the author has a lot of knowledge in this realm, but seems to only reference it to his consulting business or divert questions to other authors.
4. The feeling of "missing the boat" or helplessness which the author brings into his pessimistic conclusions. If you have not already built a stronghold out in the country at the top of your mountain with an independent water supply 5 years ago, then you are probably boned. Good luck!

These are my own thoughts and conclusions based on this work purely for its standalone value. I still have a lot of confidence and respect in and for the author based on his previous work. I just wish he would have given us more. I am still giving him a slightly positive review 

Relevant, September 30, 2009
Rawles has been providing an important service to the readers of his books and of his survivalblog for years. Disasters happen regularly all over the world, and Rawles has the best and most relevant info on how to prepare and cope with these life-threatening problems and this book shows you how to do it. I recommend everyone read his books and blog and take steps to prepare for what will inevitably come, be it storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorism, economic breakdown, or civil unrest. Do a little bit of preparing every week and you'll sleep better knowing you can keep your family fed and sheltered in case something bad happens. If it never comes, all the better! We all have home and car insurance, right? This is just another kind of insurance.

Prepper bible, September 30, 2009
First, ignore that illiterate, lying fool who gave this compendium 1 star. He hasn't read the book, and is condemning Mr. Rawles for something he didn't do: Predict a collapse.

Mr. Rawles is a fountain of knowledge regarding basic and not-so-basic prepare-to-survive techniques. Additionally, he supplies excellent Do's and Don'ts for just about every likely, and unlikely scenario you may enounter.

This book is far more likely to save your life than whoever is on the other end of a 911 call, if anyone.

Agree with the Rawles Philosophy, Disagree on Many Details, and Hope We're Wrong About People, October 19, 2009
First off, I have read most of the reviews of this book and have found some misinformation. This is not a book of extremist thinking or encouraging extremist actions. One reviewer stated the book goes into details such as "man traps," and that is simply not true, not once does the book go into such a contrivance. The reviewer probably has a "knee jerk" reaction to anything with the term "survivalist" applied to it and might have run across a discussion of the subject elsewhere, perhaps on the authors survival blog, but not necessarily written by Mr. Rawles. One thing about this author, he certainly doesn't censor other opinions of the contributors to his blog, at least in my experience. That being said, I think the potential reader "on the fence" about it give this work a try, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I am of the opinion that Mr. Rawles does himself a disservice and denies his work a potentially broader audience by using marketing tactics (such as the title of this work) that will win with his core audience, but scare off others that could benefit.

A core principle that Rawles puts forth early in the book is the fragile nature of our current society. Just in time inventory practices, out of control government spending, and a fleeting work ethic in our nation are indeed a formula for disaster. Interestingly, the idea that there is a "bureaucratic branch" putting in place our downfall is put forth in Mark Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny" and echoed here. Inflation may very well be in our near future and may very well be a cause for what Rawles calls here (and in his novel Patriots) "The Big Crunch." I agree with this view wholeheartedly.

A second core principle put forth, is that the typical citizen of this country, when denied his TV, drugs, microwave entr�e's, and other instant gratification will revert to a savage state. When confronted with deprivation and potentially starvation, he will resort to outright unbridled barbarism. I WANT to disagree on this point and believe in "the better angels of our nature." It is my hope that in a cataclysmic situation, people will respond as they did on 9/11, and "pitch in." We cannot trust this will be the case however, so we must prepare.

The last principle that I wanted to touch on in this review is the inclusion that is part of this philosophy. Mr. Rawles wants a prepared America. He does not only want white Christians to be prepared. I sincerely believe it is his hope that there will not be a societal collapse, but that he has abandoned the hope that there will not be. I think he believes the mechanisms put in place by the "bureaucratic branch" and the "moneychangers" have reached terminal velocity. The point that should be taken from this is that this is a NEW class of "survivalist" that can (and should) include everyone, although the principles of the philosophy tend to be more embraced by white Christians. Sometimes it does have that "traditional survivalist" flavor in its delivery, but to be dismissive and brand this man as a "survivalist nut" is the hallmark of a fool.

I disagree with some details in the book. I disagree completely on the idea that we can all somehow live at a retreat full time, requiring I adapt the information for my situation. I disagree with his advice on firearms completely. Many of the recommendations could be simplified, and one does need to consider an "oddball caliber" because of the current supply problems with ammunition. I dislike the at times "preachy tone" his Christian beliefs inject into the work, but that is his prerogative, and I like that his beliefs lead him to include charity in his philosophy. However, because I disagree with many points of this philosophy, and have some experience in Emergency Management, I develop and evangelize a philosophy called StrongPoint Preparedness and it's out on the web to those that may be interested in an alternative, and I invite all to participate.

This book is geared towards a cataclysmic circumstance, but much of the work is useful in planning for "routine emergencies" like hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, particularly the sections on G.O.O.D. All in all, this is an excellent preparedness resource that I hope none of us will ever need, written by a sincere man who practices what he preaches. Good luck!

Not great, October 22, 2009
This book does a good job of telling you why to prepare for emergencies, big and small, in the first 10 pages. The rest contains precious little actionable information to help you prioritize and accomplish any sizable preparations. This combination sets up the reader with a (maybe healthy) sense of foreboding and then leaves them with an unhealthy level of confusion and anxiety. Definitely not what I would call an effective introduction to emergency preparation.

In several areas where actionable information is provided, I noted flaws in the recommendations. Certainly everybody's situation is different, but packing grains for long term storage is not difficult and this book got it wrong. As an example, a metal twist tie for mylar bags is not as effective as heat sealing. This level of mistake in areas I have personally worked through leaves little confidence in the book's content on other areas of prepping I'm still learning about.

There are better books out there; few of them are "survival" manuals per se. The reader would be better served with books on low-tech living and camping, traditional skills like canning, gardening and homesteading and Mel Tappan's Tappan on Survival as an introduction to the prepper/survival mindset. ... Read more

Editorial Review

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?

With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.

Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.

Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas. ... Read more

Reviews

A staggering insight into cultivating creativity
In my years as a Wall Street strategy advisor and as a life-long student of that which propels us towards our greatest potential, I am fascinated by an interesting structural tension when it comes to personal and professional excellence.

We have at our finger tips, some of the greatest knowledge, tools and processes that can help propel people and organizations towards excellence and yet despite this vast wealth of information, many people (and the organizations they are associated with) struggle.

After exploring many theories over the years, I think I just realized why this is the case and I am staggered by the implications.

I have just finished reading "Where Good Ideas Come From" by Steven Johnson (author of "Everything Good is Bad For You" and "The Invention of Air") and found the ideas contained within to be of staggering profundity.

A Different View on Creativity

With no offence intended towards well-intentioned individuals within organizations who come up with interesting ways to help us be more creative, I have often struggled with the value of some of the ideas they have come up with. Some examples come to mind, including the time I flew across the country for a mandatory, all-hands meeting where we played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey or another time when I travelled across the country for a mandatory meeting where the primary thing that was accomplished was a competition to see who could build a toy helicopter out of Lego Blocks the fastest.

When I asked people why we were doing these things, I was informed that it was to help us learn to be more creative. I learned something alright but it was not what they hoped I had learned. By the way, I won the helicopter competition, so there are no sour grapes here. :-)

As I read Steven Johnson's book, I realized why we struggle with how to be more creative.

It's because we spend too much time trying to experience an extrinsic-centric learning event when we should be refining the foundational components of what makes a human being a source of unlimited creativity.

As I read his book, I realized why we are often more hit-than-miss when it comes to increasing our potential for creativity. His book also helped me understand why our creativity sometimes grows in leaps and bounds while at other times, we seem unable to recreate this experience, making our growth in creativity seem frustratingly random or lucky.

Seven Key Principles

Mr. Johnson's engaging writing style guides us through seven key areas that must be understood in order to maximize our creativity, the key areas being:

1. The adjacent possible - the principle that at any given moment, extraordinary change is possible but that only certain changes can occur (this describes those who create ideas that are ahead of their time and whose ideas reach their ultimate potential years later).

2. Liquid networks - the nature of the connections that enable ideas to be born, to be nurtured and to blossom and how these networks are formed and grown.

3. The slow hunch - the acceptance that creativity doesn't guarantee an instant flash of insight but rather, germinates over time before manifesting.

4.Serendipity - the notion that while happy accidents help allow creativity to flourish, it is the nature of how our ideas are freely shared, how they connect with other ideas and how we perceive the connection at a specific moment that creates profound results.

5. Error - the realization that some of our greatest ideas didn't come as a result of a flash of insight that followed a number of brilliant successes but rather, that some of those successes come as a result of one or more spectacular failures that produced a brilliant result.

6. Exaptation - the principle of seizing existing components or ideas and repurposing them for a completely different use (for example, using a GPS unit to find your way to a reunion with a long-lost friend when GPS technology was originally created to help us accurately bomb another country into oblivion).

7. Platforms - adapting many layers of existing knowledge, components, delivery mechanisms and such that in themselves may not be unique but which can be recombined or leveraged into something new that is unique or novel.

Insight That Resonates

Mr. Johnson guides the reader through each of these seven areas with examples that are relevant, doing so in a way that hits the reader squarely between the eyes. I found myself on many an occasion exclaiming inwardly "This idea or example is brilliant in its obviousness and simplicity".

"Where Good Ideas Come From" is a book that one must read with a pen or highlighter in hand as nuggets pop out and provide insight into past or current challenges around creativity and problem solving.

When someone decides to explore ways of helping you or your organization be more creative and they are getting ready to explore a rah-rah session, an offsite brain-storming session or they are looking to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, ask them if they have explored the foundational reasons behind what makes us creative.

And then buy a copy of this book for them.

I believe this book should be mandatory reading for every student, teacher and leader.

We are all students of Life.

We all at some point, teach others.

And if we accept that a leader is someone who influences others and we acknowledge that everyone influences someone at some point, then we are all leaders also.

Educational institutions, governments and corporations should make this book mandatory reading for everyone within their walls.

"Where Good Ideas Come From" is a fun read as well as a profound one.

May your creativity blossom as a result of exploring it.

Create a great day.

Harry

Brilliant (again)!
For those who enjoyed The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air, Johnson's latest book is another amazing treat in which science meets history, sociology and culture.

In Where Good Ideas Come From, Johnson examines the way in which people, environments and ideas meet. With references that range from biology, mathematics, neuroscience, technology, engineering, he argues convincingly that "analyzing innovation on the scale of individuals and organizations --- --- distorts our view" and that looking at patterns of creativity within cross-disciplinary contexts is far more fruitful. And Johnson is truly a polymath.

Great ideas surveyed range from Tarnier's incubator, Baggage's Difference Engine, YouTube, double-entry accounting, the Phoenix memo, the DEVONthink database program, Gutenberg's printing press etc... But this is not about cataloguing ideas, but understanding their genesis and their development, in the context of their respective socio-cultural environment.

The author does live what he preaches. In wonderful Johnson-style prose, he examines the "connective talents" of Carbon and extrapolates on the chaotic nature of innovative system. The books itself is highly original, and, given the complexity of its ideas, extremely accessible. You will not be disappointed.

Insight into creativity
Creating a theory of innovation is not an exact science as the process is messy, erratic, and often catalogued with a high selective bias towards the final "eureka" moment. In his book, Steven Johnson attempts to unpack some of this process and proposes a framework of seven key themes:

1. Adjacent possible: different innovations vary in their ability to unlock adjacent capabilities. In other words, timing matters.
2. Liquid environments: from a coffee house to your lab, the environments ability to circulate ideas plays an incredibly important role.
3. Serendipity: more often than not, it is a rare connection of two existing ideas that sets off a lightbulb, not discovery of a new one (see 2).
4. Slow hunch: instant flash of insight usually comes from years of exploration, where at some point, those ideas collide (see 3).
5. Error: many discoveries come about as an unrelated, and unexpected consequence (ex: penicillin) - be flexible with your ideas.
6. Exaptation: existing components and discoveries can often be adapted to different use cases (ex: consumer GPS applications.. see 1).
7. Platforms: where possible, build platforms and ecosystems that foster environments where 1-6 can be recombined at will.

While the specific examples chosen by author can be argued with, and an occasional metaphor is stretched too far, the book itself is well written and very engaging! Great read.

The BEST BOOK I READ IN 2010 - Period!!!
This is THE BEST BOOK I read in 2010. PERIOD. I am pleased to recognize Steven Johnson's work, Where Good Ideas Come From - The Natural History of Innovation, (Riverhead Books - Published by The Penguin Group New York, NY Copyright � 2010 by Steven Johnson).

In an era when the U.S. requires some creative thinkers to point the way ahead, I urge you and yours to devour this work. This work is timely, a shape-shifter and contains, in my opinion, the type of thinking required for re-evaluating the current foundation, energy and trajectory applicable to individuals, organizations (BOTH public and private sector), entrepreneurs, diplomats, inventors, faith-based communities etc.

What's the thesis of this work? Listen to Steven Johnson:

"If there is a single maxim that runs through this book's arguments, it is that we are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them. Like the free market itself, the case for restricting the flow of innovation has long been buttressed by appeals to the "natural " order of things. But the truth is, when one looks at innovation in nature and in culture, environments that build walls around good ideas tend to be less innovative in the long run than more open-ended environments. Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete." P.22 (emphasis is mine).

The U.S. has always been heralded as the global center for innovation, technological breakthroughs and the quality of a university system that attracts the finest minds from around the world. At present, the U.S. seems to be struggling with a paucity of good ideas and its infrastructure - that has historically produced global admiration (educational achievement, patents, new industries, technologies, strategic partnerships and economic prowess) - has been characterized by a myriad of measures as "in decline."

This book stirred my patriotic fervor, as well as my competitive and creative juices. It didn't just stir me up - it somehow rearranged some things for me - at a soul level. It is a uniquely hopeful book - a message of tangible, practical hope for global citizens faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges of survival and daily life.

As Johnson writes, Reading remains an unsurpassed vehicle for the transmission of interesting new ideas and perspectives. P.112

Thus, I am NOT going to litter this review with too many excerpts from Johnson's work that would encourage you to make a judgment that simply reading a review of it was somehow sufficient. Here's what happened to me after I read Where Good Ideas Come From - The Natural History of Innovation -- I immediately went out and devoured two of Johnson's previous, acclaimed works The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map.

From time to time, cultures produce thinkers whose ideas are simply essential, timely and (hopefully) infectious. These people and their ideas seem to rise up at times during certain historical epochs when they are desperately needed -- and may be deemed counter intuitive to the mainstream thinking that seems to be widely accepted.

As Johnson says in The Ghost Map: "The river of intellectual progress is not defined purely by the steady flow of good ideas begetting better ones; it follows the topography that has been carved out for it by external factors. Sometimes that topography throws up so many barricades that the river backs up for a while." P. 135

Where Good Ideas Come From - The Natural History of Innovation is a force that pierces the barricades that are currently preventing the natural flow of human ingenuity from proceeding as constructively and as freely as it might. This book is inhabited by the essential inertia that is fundamental to our present and our future - individually and collectively.

I can unequivocally declare this work to be The Best Book I read in 2010.

Enticing and Innovating Itself
A most interesting book and one that is stimulating to read, IMO. I don't think one needs a high-tech background and graduate degrees to enjoy this book. Reading about the innovations is like reading a minibiography of the various inventions and inventors. Highly recommended.

Best Steven Johnson book yet
I have read all of Steven Johnson's books, some more than once. He is one of only 3-4 authoers whose books I watch for and anticipate before their publication, so I was eager to pick up his latest, and not only did it not disappoint, it may be his most thought-provoking yet.

Those of you who have read any of his other books, "The Invention of Air", "Mind Wide Open" or "The Ghost Map" will instantly recignize his lucid, well-researched yet casual tone, and in many ways he is building upon ideas brought forth in those earlier works, consolidating them and putting them together to form new ideas, an endeavor which ironically is one of the very concepts he discusses here.

A better, though less eye-catching title would have been "How Good Ideas Come About". The book is not so much about where, as about what are the conditions most ideal for them. He makes some very interesting and convincing analogies between the natural world and human culture, and bouncing back and forth effortlessly between the two realms is very fresh and compelling.

But even more than his earlier books, the ride along the way is extremely enjoyable. Fans of Ghost Map and Invention of Air will revel in the sheer quantity of "Wow, I never knew that" moments. But this book differs in approach: rather than delve deeply into one or two individual fascinating historical figures and extrapolating conclusions about human culture at large from it, this book starts from the cultural concept (the generation of innovative ideas) and surveys many historical examples to make his points. Each of these examples is fascinating enough to warrant a book all on their own!

I have come away from this book totally affirmed for my penchant for working on 6 projects at once, and for "spacing out". And I've been energized and inspired. Thanks Mr. Johnson!

... Read more

Editorial Review

In this report, Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg focus on the potential for shared and interactive learning made possible by the Internet. They argue that the single most important characteristic of the Internet is its capacity for world-wide community and the limitless exchange of ideas. The Internet brings about a way of learning that is not new or revolutionary but is now the norm for today’s graduating high school and college classes. It is for this reason that Davidson and Goldberg call on us to examine potential new models of digital learning and rethink our virtually enabled and enhanced learning institutions.

This report is available in a free digital edition on the MIT Press website at http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513593.

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning ... Read more

Reviews

A reflection on the effect of new technologies on higher learning, January 11, 2010
The "Digital Age" that we live in has been the subject of many (too many?) books, articles, essays and blogs in recent times. Everyone who has not lived in a cave in the last few years realizes that the pace of technological advancement is increasing, and many of the traditional forms of communicating, working and shopping are continuously being redefined. Despite all of this, the role and the form of higher education have hardly changed, aside from PowerPoint presentations replacing most writing-on-a-blackboard styled ones. On the other hand, it is unclear whether any of these new technologies do in fact aid the learning process. As someone who has implemented many of these trends in college classes that I had taught, I have to admit that the jury is still out on the actual impact that the new digital technologies can have on students.

This short book raises many interesting points and it provides references to several novel learning and publishing tools that I will be happy to try out. The book itself was written using some of those tools in a very collaborative process. It provides a prescription for implementing many of these tools and techniques in academia. However, it is not clear to me what exactly would the implementation of those tools and teaching techniques accomplish. In fact, there is very little hard analysis in this book that one can find in most social-science publications. Overall, this book provides more starting points for further consideration than actionable ideas for further development of higher education. It is a worthwhile read if one doesn't expect too much.

Not Supported By Scrutiny, August 12, 2010
Davidson and Goldberg state that changes in communications technology in recent decades demand concommitant changes in how schools, especially colleges and universities, educate our young. I agree. But our authors take that premise and run with it in some directions which I don't believe are supported by the evidence.

Our authors insist that conventional education, with its hierarchical social groupings and insistence on individual work, will prove completely unsustainable in coming years. I wonder if they have read their history seriously enough. Their warnings repeat, nearly verbatim, statements made when moveable type, film, and television challenged former paradigms of learning. A time traveler from 1975 might be astounded to see that videotape hasn't rendered teachers obsolete.

They go on to extol "virtual" educational models which take place without "the contiguity of time and place." Which sounds good, but my own experiments with structural flexibility teach me that, if I don't require my students to be in a room at a certain time, more than half of them will never do the reading or write their assignments more than a day in advance. I doubt even Goldberg and Davidson believe that classes without classrooms will ever be more than icing on the cake for advanced students. They concede early on that "most virtual institutions are, in fact, supported by a host of real institutions and real individuals."

Though some students love learning enough to be self-motivated, they are not the majority. Many, if not most, regard classes, even within their majors, as a nuisance. I would love it if my students had enough ambition to undertake the kind of team tasks Davidson and Goldberg describe, but anybody who has taught more than one or two semesters knows that if you get three students per class who don't need to be prodded, you are one lucky cuss.

I found one comment our authors quoted to be all too telling. A respondent to an early draft of this paper insisted that "open-ended assignments provide the opportunity for creative, research-based learning." This is true, for those willing to embrace such opportunity. But this respondent sought out and answered back to a scholarly paper; I might get two students per semester with that level of ambition.

I would absolutely love to assign more open-ended research projects. I would love to let my students take ownership of the learning process. But I have learned the hard way that they usually will not. I had two students drop my class this past semester because, even with five days' warning, they considered a ten-question reading quiz on a twenty-page chapter too onerous.

Likewise, these authors repeat the claim, which I keep seeing lately, that Pokemon teaches youth important matematical and reasoning skills. I don't doubt this. But my colleagues in the Math Department tell me that only a handful make the leap that allows them to apply Pokemon-based math skills to diverse real world applications. Most still rely on the institutional classroom to make that connection for them. Regular students still need the skills and structure only a conventional four-wall classroom can provide.

Consider Wikipedia, which the authors extol, claiming that professors disparage the site without merit. Yes, its many user/editors keep it up-to-date and Open-Source. Yes, the collaborative model ferrets out innacuracies. But even laying aside the limits of a tertiary source, its programming model leaves it vulnerable to pranks and hacks by idiots. Even that wouldn't be so bad if students utilized their discretion to screen out obvious bunk, but they don't. Too many students receive content uncritically, and I get papers riddled with inaccuracies.

Institutional schooling has survived past changes in the media and cultural landscape because it works. Sure, it will have to adapt to the influence of the new technology, just as it has before. But as long as most youth need mature guidance to take on the skills and responsibilities of adulthood, there will be a place for a classroom with a clear leader judging progress. Davidson and Goldberg claim the old models have become obsolete, but that just doesn't bear up to scrutiny.

Will formal education adapt and evolve to a new reality? Should it?, June 28, 2010
This kindle "book" is sort of a preview of a much larger work the authors are currently writing. In reality, this should be read like a very long magazine article exploring how the digital age may affect and is affecting higher education in particular and to a lesser extent elementary and secondary education.

The "book" begins and ends, to its disadvantage, with a lot of jargon-filled commentary such as: "We contend that the future of learning institutions demands a deep, epistmogological appreciation of the profundity of what the Internet offers humanity as a model of a learning institution." (loc 50) Yes, yes, yes. This is college writing at its classic wordiness.

Fortunately, once we get into the heart of the paper it gets quite interesting and more reader friendly. There are some big, important questions being asked here, such as, "Why go to college to get information when it can be found in 3 seconds on the internet?" and "Is the purpose of college really to learn skills under the tutelage of acknowledged experts?" (If that is so, why was my smallest class at Indiana University 8 people and the average was around 40?)

The authors seem to be leaning away from the traditional expert model of the university and embracing the collaborative model of the Internet. They use the model of Wikipedia, which is the poster child for what is right and wrong about the internet. Anyone can edit it, which means anyone with knowledge can add to it, but vandals can also damage the site or ignorant people can include their "facts" as well. One of my high school students added his own name to the site for the band Korn as a "spoon player". It stayed up there for months.

But, this model has strengths as well. As a group, we certainly know more than we do individually. The trick is using the experts to weed out the inaccurate information. The authors are especially interested in global participation - they are imagining projects with participants from all over the world, which is easily possible right now with sites plenty of online sites, not just public ones like Wikipedia. What they don't have is an answer as to how to connect the experts with the students all over the world and make sure that the "facts" that are being learned are actually facts.

The meat of this paper is quite interesting and would make for a great classroom discussion. What will education in the future look like? What will college mean in the future - will it mean that an area of knowledge has been mastered or will it mean that the holder of the degree has demonstrated the ability to work towards an abstract goal for an extended period of time? I think the latter has been reality for a while now and the diffusion of information technology will only make it more so.

Raises Important Questions But Answers Them in a One-Sided Way, August 21, 2010
"The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age" is a free Kindle redaction of a larger book to come: "The Future of Thinking: Learning in a Digital Age." It proceeded from the MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, based on a collaborative work on this subject. The thesis of this Kindle book is that "the single most important characteristic of the Internet is its capacity to allow for a worldwide community and its endlessly myriad subsets to exchange ideas, to learn from one another in a way not previously available."

As a teacher and priest, and one interested in how the new technologies are changing us, I found the book fascinating and that it raised many important issues. In short, I find that the book makes the reader aware of how the world is changing, especially the world of education, and makes the reader think about the relationship between technology, especially the Internet, and education. However, it makes promises based on misunderstandings of human nature and behavior without acknowledging the limitations and failings of Internet technology and the ways we use it.

The first chapter is titled "The Classroom or the World Wide Web? Imaging the Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age." It argues that institutions of learning have changed far more slowly than the modes of learning offered by the Internet. Furthermore, rival institutions of learning such as the Internet challenge traditional institutions such as the hierarchy of teacher and student, credentialing, and restriction of admission. While these ideas are provocative, I find that there is a one-sided presentation that only looks at the possible positive outcomes of Internet learning and overstates its case. For example, it's unlikely that the hierarchy of teachers and learners will ever be abolished, even if the nature of these may change. There will always be some who, through experience, position, or wisdom, become the leaders of others. Also, the authors seem to assume that the fact that the Internet democratizes in terms of opportunities people have will necessarily result in equal outcomes. However, as in every other area of human behavior, people will not use the Internet equally, and, thus, there will be an inequality of outcomes. The section on participatory learning was useful. But here, again, the authors do not adequately deal with the issue. They raise the issue of growing dropout rates and the divide between those who are educated and those who are not, but they offer no solution - only a vague promise that participatory, networked learning will make things better. In extolling Wikipedia as a collaborative, participatory, networked work, the authors don't address the fact that Wikipedia is often inaccurate and that people with power, whether corporate (such as government, corporations, or political groups) or individuals (such as hackers) can manipulate information.

The rest of the chapters are titled "Pillars of Institutional Pedagogy: Ten Principles for the Future of Learning," "Challenges from Past Practice" and "Conclusion: Yesterday's Tomorrow."

Throughout the book, it's clear that Marshall McLuhan's proverb, "the medium is the message" becomes important in answering the question of what the implications are for Internet for education. In summary, this work raises a lot of the right questions about technology and education but answers them in a one-sided way.
... Read more

Editorial Review

For marketers, The New Rules of Marketing and PR shows you how to leverage the potential that Web-based communication offers your business. Finally, you can speak directly to customers and buyers, establishing a personal link with the people who make your business work. This one-of-a-kind guide includes a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of the Internet to create compelling messages, get them in front of customers, and lead those customers into the buying process. ... Read more

Reviews

A to Z assistance for any business
More than anything, The New Rules of Marketing & PR ties things together. The book provides an easy to understand yet comprehensive view of the new online marketplace--a landscape that can appear quite bewildering, even to marketing specialists. With so many options at our fingertips (literally), where do we start? Blogs? Podcasts? Public relations? SEO? Paid search? Viral marketing? The list goes on. To make matters worse, technology is changing and new tools are developing almost every day.

In the early chapters, David takes a high altitude look at online marketing options, showing us how they developed, why they're important, how they work, and why they work. In later "Action Plan" chapters, he jumps into the trenches and shows us how to actually use the tools and implement programs. Throughout, he uses detailed case studies to illustrate not only the programs but the amazing results they can achieve.

But it isn't just the latest and greatest technologies that are crucially important. Public relations, for example, has been around since Gutenberg but for the first time is practical for a small company. Traditional PR was cost-prohibitive and dependent on unreachable key media contacts. But in the new world--

"...your primary audience is no longer just a handful of journalists. Your audience is millions of people with Internet connections and access to search engines and RSS readers." (Chapter 5)

Today, public relations may be the single most underutilized tool in the marketing arsenal.

Another "old" technology David brings us up to speed on is the corporate Web site. In fact, the three most important points I got out of The New Rules of Marketing & PR have enormous implications on traditional Web development.

Those key points are--

1. The most important New Rule is CONTENT. Design is important. Technology is important. But without extraordinary content, you're doomed.

2. Interruption marketing (think spam and pop-up ads) has given way to consumer-driven marketing. Yippee! "The Web is different. Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it." (Chapter 1)

3. The starting point for any New Rule program is to create customer personas. If you're going to have extraordinary content that motivates buyers to take action, you'd better know your customers inside-out.

David explains how these three principles should influence not only your corporate Web site, but every other online program you undertake.

Thankfully, David is understandable as well as instructive. One reason I've enjoyed his blog for over a year is his conversational, entertaining writing style. He makes learning easy (which is harder to do than you might think). Anyway, his book is just like his blog--illuminating and fun.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR presents the most complete picture of any book I've read. For the marketing specialist, it will fill in the gaps. For the generalist, it will open up a whole new world.

What a Wake-Up Call!
By embracing the strategies in this book , you will totally transform your business. David Meerman Scott shows you a multitude of ways to propel your company to a thought leadership position in your market and drive sales - all without a huge budget.

From my perspective, the best thing about this book is that everyone can gain value from it. There are so many places you can start applying these new rules of marketing and PR. For example, I'm an experienced blogger, considered an expert in my field and already have a strong online presence. Yet I'm immediately going to start applying the lessons in Chapter 14: How to Use News Releases to Reach Buyers Directly.

Here's what else I like about this book:

1. The author includes numerous examples from a variety of businesses in different industries & sizes that have all used these strategies for success.

2. The book shows you multiple venues to reach your buyers directly. This circumvents the high costs of mainstream media enabling firms who are running bootstrap operations to compete with the big boys.

3. The "how to" guidelines on leveraging news releases in a web-based world are excellent. You'll learn how to create news on a regular basis, capitalize on various distribution services, focus on key words/phrases in your writing that are used by your buyers, and incorporate social media tags.

4. The insights on optimizing a website's online media room for search engines is another easy-to-implement technique with high payback.

In summary, I guarantee you that your investment in this book will be paid back many times.

~ Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies

What everyone with a web site needs to know...in clear, simple language!
Waste of time for small business owners, this is more for bigger company that has millions of marketing budget. A lot of theory, but few practical stuff that I can actually do without money. Instead I would recommend Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz, I found it to be a lot more helpful for my business. There are things in there I can actually start doing right away to better my business.

Never pay for Marketing & PR again!
For those who read David's Web Ink Now blog [...], the themes of this book will be familiar. David released an eBook, the New Rules of PR, last year, focusing on direct-to-consumer press releases. That eBook, plus all of his experiences in viral marketing have led to this new book.

The book expands beyond PR to include online marketing, viral marketing and leveraging content. As David points out, in this new environment, these areas are all converging. A news release, posted to your website, simply becomes marketing content to the reader. As with his previous book, Cashing in With Content, Scott uses compelling real-world examples to demonstrate the benefits of these methods.

Roughly half the book is focused on putting these concepts to practice in your own environment. These ten chapters provide specific guidance for understanding buyer personas, using content to position your company as a thought leader and writing content that will resonate with your buyers. There are also hands-on chapters on blogging, podcasting and leveraging social networking sites.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR covers a lot of ground in less than 300 pages. For traditional marketers and executives, the book is an accessible guide to the emerging models. For those knee-deep in online marketing already, the New Rules serves as a useful checklist of tips and tools to ensure that your marketing, PR and content are working together to help you achieve your goals.

[...]

Excellent book for anyone doing business online
Sending a "dash and blast" press release to a reporter's already overflowing email inbox no longer cuts it.

To survive in today's "user generated content" world you have to join your buyers and customers in their world -- that is, online, where they are reading and commenting on discussion boards, updating Wiki entries, and writing blog posts.

Miss or ignore a negative post and you can potentially see millions of dollars drain from your corporate coffers.

What I liked about this book is that David explains how all the new techhologies and old media can work together -- RSS in media rooms, corporate blogs and PR, and podcasting and branding -- to help buyers find your company's products and services.

He gives practical advice on how to pitch the media (hint: don't spam them with untargeted press releases), how to monitor and respond to discussion forums, and how to monitor the blogosphere for "viral eruptions."

Whether you're a corporate PR pro or a small business owner, this book will help you navigate your way through the new methods of reaching your customers. ... Read more

Editorial Review

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“The Social Network, the much anticipated movie…adapted from Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires.” —The New York Times

Best friends Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg had spent many lonely nights looking for a way to stand out among Harvard University’s elite, comptetitive, and accomplished  student body. Then, in 2003, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s computers, crashed  the campus network, almost got himself  expelled, and was inspired to create Facebook, the social networking site that has since revolutionized communication around the world.
 
With Saverin’s funding their tiny start-up went from dorm room to Silicon Valley. But conflicting ideas about Facebook’s future transformed the friends into enemies. Soon, the undergraduate exuberance that marked their collaboration turned into out-and-out warfare as it fell prey to the adult world of venture capitalists, big money, lawyers.

Reviews

Tabloid Quality Dramatic Narrative, July 14, 2009
I read this book because I wanted to understand the history of Facebook--a program (a site, a lifestyle) that is changing society. The book's cover (a picture of a red, lacy bra and a couple of cocktail glasses) and subtitle (A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal) should have tipped me off that it was not going to be serious history. Mezrich writes the book in the style of dramatic narrative which apparently means "when I don't have facts, I'll just make 'em up and when the story gets slow, I'll fabricate a sex scene." He does provide lots of interesting facts and shares the rather brutal history of Facebook (from Mark Zuckerberg essentially stealing the idea from people who had asked him to create a very similar social media site to the backhanded way that he forced his co-founder out of the company). I suppose it is a tale of money, genius and betrayal, though I don't see how sex really enters into the true tale except as much as it would for any group of college students (except, of course, as a selling feature). So this is Mezrich's take on the story, written in a tabloid fashion where what is true and what could be true blend together. By his own admission, Mezrich did not speak to Zuckerberg at all and relied very heavily on Eduardo Saverin, a valuable though hardly objective source (seeing as he is the very co-founder who was removed from the company). The framework of the facts seems to line up with what I've read elsewhere but the very nature of the book makes it somewhat less than trustworthy. Still, if you want to know how Facebook came to be, how it evolved from a week's worth of work for a college student to a company valued in the billions dollars, this seems to be the only show in town. Even then, read Wikipedia first to see if it offers enough to satisfy your curiosity before plunking down the money for this book. Even at just $16.50 it's hard to believe that it's worth the money.

Don't accidentally buy this book, July 18, 2009
I enjoyed Ben Mezrich's "Bringing down the House" but his latest books have been terrible. First the very boring "Rigged", and now "The Accidental Billionaires", about the history of Facebook.

All of his books follow the same formula: A young, brilliant man suddenly finds fortune and girls by using his skills to make money in interesting ways. Usually he has a mentor. His success causes some friction with his friends, but he eventually wins out, albeit at a price. This formula is so rigid one wonders if Mezrich begins his books with a Word Template... Chapter Five - Hero realizes the idea will make lots of money... Chapter Eight - Hero gets with girl way out of his league...

The characters seem like hand-puppets even though they are allegedly real-life personas. You have the unlucky-in-love nerd, his pushover sidekick, and the jealous jocks. The dialogue is so mundane and contrived you can't imagine anyone talking that way.

As for women, they exist only as status symbols in Mezrich's books.

Now, the story about the founding of a website will not excite most readers, so Mezrich tries to sex it up with stories of lavish parties and groupies. The problem is Mezrich admits to creative storytelling in the Forward-- collapsing time frames, combining characters, even imagining scenarios. So, in effect, everything not publicly documented could be fabricated.

As a history or bigraphy, then, we already know that the book is useless. But it also fails as a compelling drama. In some chapters basically nothing happens. Mezrich will spend pages describing the setting in detail, the characters will make a few remarks, and then the chapter ends. What was it about? Why was it important? Who knows. But these chapters do pad out the book, which is a breezy read anyway. You will finish the thing in a few hours. There's about 10 words per line, 20 lines per page, and very little content. The meat of the book takes us up to 2005, before Facebook's truly phenomenal growth (it was still far behind MySpace at the time), and before anything is resolved. Like many of the chapters, the book just sorta ends. I suspect the movie rights to this book were sold before the book was even in the outline stage, and he was on a tight deadline.

In short, this book gives you no reliable information, and is not even entertaining.

Poorly written, July 19, 2009
I was amazed how poorly this book is written. I originally thought that it was the author's first book, but to my amazement it turned out that he already published 10 books! I only read it because I was curious about the story, but seriously, the story could be written in 20 pages, not two hundred something. Also, the constant mention of "hot blond" or "hot Asian" chicks was extremely annoying and offensive. Isn't it strange that every character in the book views women purely as a sex object and is only attracted to blonds or Asians. Or is it the author, Ben Mezrich only attracted to Asian or blond chicks? Anyway, this book was a total waste of money for me.

Great look behind the scenes of a revolution, July 27, 2009
Here is what you need to know about this book:

1. Is it an enjoyable read? YES. Read the book in about a day and a half and couldn't put it down at the end.

2. Is it an interesting story? YES. For the first time, I really felt that I was there (the "fly on the wall") as a whole idea unfolded from end-to-end, to become something that makes Microsoft and Google quiver in their boots.

3. Is it an interesting plot? YES. Its a real tragedy of friendship, greed, and power. It is a delightfully unexpected path woven together well by Mezrich.

I saw lot of reviews and reports about this story, and read it eyes-opened. Is this verbatim of what actually happened? Of course not, but do you really believe everything that gets written by Jenna Jameson or Marilyn Manson in their "true autobiographies". Is it clear enough that this is the way the main plot played out? -- to me there is little question.

So if you want to enjoy a good read, pick up this book. It you want to stock up on dry factoids, pick up an Encylopedia Brittanica -- I hear they are real cheap nowadays ;)

Where's the beef?, July 14, 2009
Mark Zuckerberg is the very public face of Facebook so this book will let readers know all about the genius Harvard computer nerd who turned a prank into the biggest social network on the web, right? Sorry, if you want to know anything new about Zuckerberg you'll have to search elsewhere.

He would not speak to the author. Zuckerberg's former friend and partner Eduardo helped out. He doesn't seem to know Zuckerberg at all. By the end of this book he admits that he never really knew the guy well. Even the anonymous sources don't add much to this discussion.

The bare bones of Facebook are here. The embryonic growth phase. The lawsuits. But it is written as a sort of fiction. The author imagines conversations and the details of events. Mezrich went to Harvard so he is writing what he knows, sort of.

The book is already optioned for a film. Perhaps the film will be bolder about portraying Zuckerberg as more than a mysterious cipher? Hard to say, with Zuckerberg's cash perhaps everybody is just afraid of litigation. Who knows?

This book is not any great revelation despite what some adoring critics might claim. A pretty wrapper but not much on the inside....

p.s. Be sure to read the review by Kim Albert aka "BigMamma" in this group of reviews. In the comments section you will find a fascinating conversation between this reviewer and Ben Mezrich, the author of "Accidental Billionaires." Enjoy!

Dont waste your money, Ben has sold out his fans, August 19, 2009
I have read all of Ben's most recent books and have greatly enjoyed his ability to put together facts and tell something in a compelling and behind the scenes fashion. I am so disappointed with this book. First off, just reading the wikipedia page about Facebook gives you as much, if not more, information about the founding of facebook. The story could have been told in 5 pages, since it is lacking research and content. He clearly did not do enough research or he should have written on another topic because the story lacks in every aspect. I feel truly robbed and completely let down.

Fact, or Fiction?, July 15, 2009
Mezrich states that some of the material involves composite characters and imagined conversations. My sense is that the material would be much more readable and credible if he had just created a factual narrative limited to 3-5 pages. As it stands, the book is just a lot of words strung together, too verbose and suspect for even the general reader.

Facebook purportedly began as a prank by a Harvard student (Mark Zuckerberg) that allowed comparing/rating its coeds. Since then three other Harvard students claim that generalizing the Facebook idea was theirs and that they paid Zuckerberg to do the original programming (case pending). It now has about 200 million members. The firm's valuation is estimated at somewhere between $10 billion (per Russian $200 million investment for 1.96% in May, 2009), and $15 billion (per Microsoft $240 million investment for 1.6% in October 2007). Why these enormous valuation figures is not clear - seems like the stratospheric valuations prior to the [...] bust of the late 1990s all over again. "The Accidental Billionaires" also does not explain what Facebook's sustainable competitive advantage is. Thus, the book also lacks value as a basic Harvard Business School case.

Audio is Worse, August 21, 2009
I listened to the unabridged audio of this book, and if you want to torture yourself with high school prose, endless filler with no purpose, and cardboard characters, then this is the audio for you. I agree with other reviewers that Bringing Down the House was a fun read, but this has no content, and appears to be based on Eduardo's limited involvement during the Harvard dorm phase. Further, the audio narrator does not improve on this trainwreck, but substantially contributes to the annoyance factor.

Mega-Money, Technology, and Social Dysfunction, November 6, 2010
People who have panned this book are mostly missing the point in my judgment. Author Ben Mezrich is raconteur with a story to tell, and he doesn't expect us to accept it as business history or even serious journalism. He offers the necessary disclaimers in his introduction, acknowledging that he did the best he could with fragmentary sources and connected the dots where necessary with a fair amount of probabilistic imagining. One senses he captures the gist of this story pretty well, in much the way a talented sketch artist can draw an uncanny portrait despite distortion and a lack of details. Allowing for such limitations, this is quite a good book.

The digital economy has spawned a series of meteoric companies and overnight billionaires over the past three decades. And just when it seemed this phenomenon had passed its zenith, along came Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. Yet another geeky kid with a high IQ and anarchistic tendencies, Zuckerberg created the precursor to Facebook as a hacker's prank during his short stint as a Harvard undergraduate. When the prank "went viral" literally overnight within the Harvard community, Zuckerberg knew he was onto something much bigger than he bargained for.

There were other ideas for online social networks being explored at the time. At Harvard itself, a couple of wealthy six-foot-five crew champions - identical twins - had a similar notion. The Winklevoss brothers knew little about computers, however, and had hired a programmer for the project, who dawdled with it for a while and then quit suddenly. To complete the task, the twins turned to Mark Zuckerberg, who was miles beneath them in social status at Harvard but had become an instant campus celebrity when he hacked the University computers. Everyone at Harvard, including the Winklevosses, knew who he was and recognized his technical prowess. Zuckerman too appeared to doddle with the project, but was in fact moving at lightning speed in secret to build his own social networking site. When he launched the surprise attack, the Winklevosses were stunned and accused him of stealing their idea and their code. In reality, the slow-footed twins had nothing worth stealing, since Zuckerman already had the idea and probably viewed the code as child's play. What he was guilty of was stalling the two brothers long enough for him to gain the first-mover's advantage.

Zuckerberg never looked back afterwards. After "the facebook" pervaded Harvard, he quickly introduced it to one college campus after another as the wild viral phenomenon fed on itself. With thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of new users flocking to the site, Zuckerberg was building a potential gold mine. However, a true-blue hacker to the core, he seemed to care little about business matters or even money. For this stuff, he partnered with his best friend, Eduardo Saverin. Saverin was also something of an outsider at Harvard, but he was more polished than Zuckerberg and had some business credentials. He had managed a small hedge fund one summer, and his father was a successful businessman. Saverin put his own money into the project and in yeoman-like fashion set about finding advertisers for Facebook.

In the meantime, Zuckerberg had made contact with Sean Parker, the buccaneering and hyperactive young co-founder of Napster. Parker had flamed out with Napster and all of his other business ventures to date, but he still saw himself as a player and had ties to serious venture capital money. He introduced Zuckerberg to Peter Theil, a man with very deep pockets, who opened them up to set Facebook on its way as big business. Glibly jettisoning his Harvard career, Zuckerberg moved to California, while Eduardo Saverin chose to continue plodding along back in Cambridge. Sensing correctly that he had become superfluous to the operation and was being phased out, Saverin in a fit of pique tried to short-circuit the young business by closing its bank accounts, which he still controlled. Zuckerberg and his new partners struck back mercilessly by conspiring to drive Saverin out of the company. Zuckerman lured him out to California to review as set of re-incorporation documents, which amazingly Saverin signed without comprehending. Shortly afterwards, Facebook issued a ton of new equity that diluted Saverin's share of the soon-to-be multibillion-dollar company down to virtually nothing. He was out of a job and a fortune, and friendship was out the door.

In his epilogue Ben Mezrich describes himself as an "enormous fan of all the characters in this book", forcing us to wonder how he might write about people for whom he feels less enthusiasm. No one comes off well here. Zuckerberg himself, who didn't cooperate with the author, is a dark enigma. Like most compulsive hackers, he probably has a diagnosable psychological disorder. He could be a schizoid personality, or even suffer from Asperger's syndrome or one of the other mild variants of autism. None of these conditions preclude brilliance, and some can even enhance a person's ability to focus monomaniacally on technical problem-solving.

Eduardo Saverin appears a likeable enough person, but a patsy for whom it's hard to sympathize. For the guy for fancied himself the business brain behind Facebook, the fact that he would blindly sign a legal document authorizing his own destruction seems proof he needed to find another job anyway. Sean Parker, who also was later expelled by Zuckerberg and his new team, seems a stoned-out narcissist, albeit talented and engaging. The Winklevoss twins appear as privileged and rather dim-witted jocks. None of these characterizations are likely to be quite fair, but in a quick sketch, it's how they come across.

Mezrich writes in a style that's reminiscent of early Tom Wolfe and certain other authors whose work constituted what was called "new journalism" back in the 1960's. Like Mezrich, these writers were highly entertaining and easy to read, but they also generally sought to illustrate social themes. In Mezrich's case, his theme is the impact of progressive technology and mega-money on people's lives in twenty-first century America. Whether Mezrich is a "fan" of his characters or not, they don't come across as very happy people. They're engaged in socially useful business, and while not truly corrupt as people, they're self-centered and generally amoral. One gets the impression that mega-money is likely only to make these problems worse for them as their young lives progress.

Mezrich's limited purpose with this book is to entertain us and to illustrate these motifs. I think he succeeds, and I can recommend the book to people who don't expect from it more than it has to offer.

A Book that tells the story of Facebook., February 21, 2010
Facebook transformed the lives of today's young generation. This generation socializes today both physically and electronically! To a large extent, they socialize mostly electronically than physically. Thanks to Facebook!

I am a Facebook user myself and I am quite hooked to it. I access it at least once a day and it helps me stay in touch with friends. I get news of my friends from facebook and I publish my own on it. I stay in touch with all my friends and get back together with friends I lost touch with a long time ago. Facebook truly changed our lives.

This book gives you the story of facebook. The behind the scenes work that helped make Facebook what it is today. It shows how a Billion Dollar project like Facebook could change people and end friendships in a matter of seconds.

Interesting book to read. I believe it serves more as a novel than an autobiography of Mark Zuckerberg. I recommend buying and reading it.
... Read more

Editorial Review

Create bold web content and build a loyal customer base online

Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other publishing platforms are giving everyone a "voice," including organizations and their customers. So how do you create the bold stories, videos, and blog posts that cultivate fans, arouse passion for your products or services, and ignite your business?

Content Rules equips you for online success with a one-stop source on the art and science of developing marketing content that people care about. This coverage is interwoven with case studies of companies successfully spreading their ideas online-and using them to establish credibility and build a loyal customer base.

• Learn the art of storytelling and the science of journalism
• Find an authentic "voice" and craft bold content that will resonate with prospects and buyers and encourage them to share it with others
• Leverage social media and social tools to get your content and ideas distributed as widely as possible
• Written by the Chief Content Officers of marketingprofs.com

Boost your online presence and engage with customers and prospects like never before with Content Rules. ... Read more

Reviews

Insanely Great Look at Creating Content
I should preface this review by saying I have been podcasting and creating content for the web for over five years now, and that I regularly help clients do the same. This said, I was expecting Content Rules to be a good book on the subject, but perhaps one of those that did not speak to me, because of my experience. I was wrong- Content Rules speaks to everyone- even seasoned content creators, by providing the metrics we may know around content creation, but haven't yet articulated, and helps make the case for content for everyone from people getting their feet wet on the Web for the first time, to those who are looking to raise their game and up their level of engagement with others online.

Content Rules is compelling and honest from the introduction on. It is a book I can hand my clients, friends, teachers- almost anyone who wonders why people need to or bother creating content for the web- to help not only explain why compelling content is important, but how to create it. It helps people break down the barriers that often get in the way of creating compelling content, and instead gives them some parameters on how to make sure your authentic and compelling voice shine through. In addition, the examples and case studies in the book bring the rules to life, in a way that will help folks understand how to find their human voice, and why that is so important to success in contrast to another paragraph of over-polished, sanitized, personality-free "safe" messaging.

I'm really excited by Content Rules as a book I can enthusiastically pass on to friends, colleagues, clients and more. If it's between a more generic book on social media or online marketing and this one, you need Content Rules because it will help you understand the fundamental approach you need to take regardless of the tool, platform, network or marketing plan- you need to concentrate on your Content first.

The Why and How of Using Content for Customer Engagement
Not for the faint of heart...this book is a meaty look at why content has become such an important tool for businesses to engage their customers, as well as how to go about creating the right type of content for you.

Packed with real-world examples, this book teaches you (as noted on page 24) to go for consistent doubles and triples instead of always swinging for the fences- consistent doubles and triples wins games.

I personally was able to take away a lot of specific tips, including methods to re-imagine content (instead of just plain old repurposing it). I also liked that the authors kept the focus on the customer perspective (so critical) and demonstrated how to use content to create trust instead of just using it to shout (or "shill" as they call it).

My favorite part is the case studies/examples that line the back of the book. Not only did C.C. and Ann do a great job in featuring a wide variety of companies, they included ideas that you can borrow (they says steal, but I am a more of a fan of inspiration instead of imitation) and a section they call "Ka-ching", which demonstrates how each company actually derived value from the example.

With strong content itself, written in a colloquial and easy to read manner and with solid examples, this is definitely one to dog-ear/markup and reference on an ongoing basis. A strong value.

Demystify content marketing with Content Rules
The intermediary is dead.

We don't need to rely primarily upon the media or some other conduit to communicate with our prospects and customers - we can do it ourselves.
Eventually, every company is going to have to think of itself as a TV station and a magazine. Telling your story and answering customer questions with thoughtful, relevant, engaging content can improve your awareness, lead generation, conversion rate, sales, and loyalty.

This is the premise of Content Rules, the new book from Ann Handley (Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs), and C.C. Chapman (founder of DigitalDads). Without question it is one of the most clear, concise, useful and actionable business books I've read in years. And because creating or curating content is important for all companies, it's a book that I hope will find a broad and enthusiastic audience.

Content Rules combines big picture thinking about the role of content, with step-by-step advice and helpful tips about precisely how to create content that matters. Interwoven throughout are instructive examples of companies doing it right, and links to specific pieces of content that epitomize the lessons within. The book concludes with an entire section of case studies, wisely covering businesses of many sizes and types.

Content Rules helps you make content that engages, by recommending that content be created through the eyes of your customers - the people that you're actually trying to influence. As stated beautifully in the book:

The inherent tension in marketing is that companies always want to talk about themselves and their products or services. Everyone else, meanwhile, only wants to know what those products or services can do for them. Creating content as a cornerstone of your marketing allows you to truly place yourself in your customer's shoes, to adopt their vantage points, and to consider their thoughts, feelings, and needs. In short, it allows you to get to know the people who buy from you better than any customer survey or poll ever could.

Even if you have never created a piece of online content in your life, you could do so successfully with help from this book. Once you've been disavowed of the notion that the content should be about your company per se, the authors advocate for understanding or discovering the stories you can tell; thinking through what behavior you want content consumer to engage in; selecting valid success metrics; and atomizing your content by breaking it into smaller pieces.

Content Rules wisely emphasizes that content marketing is a process, not a project. Just as a magazine doesn't have a single issue, nor should your content program, and the book provides several useful guidelines for establishing an ongoing editorial calendar, with content created not just by the marketing department, but from all over your company.

It's an easy and compelling read, lends itself to skimming and highlighting, and has real case studies and examples that you can mimic in your own business.
Content Rules takes a complicated and critical element of modern business and demystifies it with humor, instruction, and panache. Nicely done.

Seriously, I could have used this book 5 years ago
Despite having written on the web for five years, and even written a book about the web, I am only now getting a grasp on the importance of creating great content. If I had read this book when I had first gotten online (had it existed then), there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would be more successful as a result of it.

Like some reviewers have said here before me, I came at this book as an 'expert,' someone who felt they would learn only a little, but in reality, I learned a lot-- specifically about structure, about how-to, best pratices, and a lot more. I think I might keep learning if I read it a second time-- every page feels like it has information you could apply to the work you do online.

You could almost say that this book can be used as a kind of textbook for the creation of excellent content. Considering that content must be the cornerstone of any successful online business (or anyone trying to get some attention) on the web, getting this book could be critical to your business. Not only do I recommend it, I recommend that after reading it, you put in your to-do list to read it again in a few months-- that's definitely what I'm planning.

Without question, a Must Read for businesses and creatives
Packed with verve, zero-B.S. insights, tangible examples and success stories, Content Rules absolutely delivers on its promise of providing a practical and achievable road map for businesses to embrace -- and celebrate! -- content-fueled marketing. Especially heartening is its applicability far beyond the affluent walls of big business; independent businesses and creators will especially benefit from this book.

There's wisdom in Ann Handley's and C.C. Chapman's words, mostly because they hail from the gumption-soaked world of experienced content creation. These authors do far more than pay lip service to the value of content -- they breathe it and create it every day.

I rarely endorse books without reservation, but Content Rules is one of those works that is truly a Must Read for businesses, indies, salty creative veterans and curious newcomers. The book is brimming with incalculably valuable anecdotes, how-tos, and hard-earned advice. A steal, at any price.

Sound principles, plenty of case studies.
Content Rules is a solid book for anyone wanting to take advantage of the shift from old media to online content. The concept is nothing new if you have read David Meerman Scott's "New Rules of Marketing and PR" - you no longer have to convince media outlets to write about your product, you can create the content yourself. Once you have the concept you are then stuck saying "Ok, how do I create all this content?", and that's where this book comes in.

There are two major lessons in the book, one is outlining the tactics - creating a publishing calendar, developing an unique voice, leaving shopworn marketing copy like "paradigm shift" and "flexible, integrated solutions" behind. The other is that it is filled with case studies. Just about anyone who has done anything interesting in the online space in the past 3 years gets some ink in this book and that's where the five stars come in - you could scan blogs, podcasts and other media for months picking up the lessons in these case studies one at a time, or you can get all that work done in a day or two by reading this book.

Yes, we do need another book on content. This one!
You will need to be a content creator and curator...or else you won't survive some of the new shifts in how people gather information, make buy decisions and build brand loyalty.

We can't rely on others (mass media, press releases, other "official" sources) or manufactured hype to tell our story anymore. It's our responsibility to tell our own stories and create content that helps people find us, understand us, and ultimately buy us.

I can hear you now...do we really need another "content is king" book? Probably not. This may not be the first book written on the topic, but it is definitely one of the best I have read. It's fun to read, insightful and most important in my opinion -- Ann and C.C. give you the tools to take action.

They set the stage by demonstrating why content matters and then quickly move into the how's. A wide range of case studies, examples and stealable ideas will get your mind racing and the dog-eared pages multiplying.

I love the straightforward approach, the humor and the humanity of this book. With chapter titles like Share or Solve; Don't Shill and If Webinars Are Awesome Marketing Tools, Why Do Most of Them Suck -- you know you're going to learn a thing or two without having to dig through a lot of pretentious language or fluff.

The book itself is a living example of how potent content can be, when written for the reader, with their best interest at heart. And that of course, is the kernel of truth that is the heart of content marketing.

B-to-B your playground? Have no fear -- they take special care of you in this book with a chapter devoted just to you and plenty of B-to-B examples and case studies.

Seriously -- you need to read and learn from this book.

A Must-Have for Your Marketing Library!
Though I contributed to chapter 10 of this book, I didn't see how the whole book came together until my advance copy arrived in the mail. What a refreshing - and much-needed - look at how to connect with prospects and customers!

While there's plenty of talk these days about the need to embrace content marketing, there are few pointers on how to execute on it or examples of companies doing it well. Until now.

Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman have written a book that's a breeze to read but is sure to inspire you to action, with how-tos on creating and sharing content and real-world stories of companies doing it right. You'll pick up practical tips for developing and distributing a variety of content types, and ideas from the winning initiatives of the companies profiled. (I certainly did!)

As the authors say, organizations of any size from any industry will walk away from this book feeling confident about using content to "cultivate fans, arouse passion for their products and services, and ignite their business."

Great for Getting Up to Speed on Content Marketing
I hear a lot about content marketing and have been wondering what the buzz is all about. This book spelled it out for me in an easy-to-digest manner. You can't beat the humorous, down-to-earth approach that Ann and C.C. took in this book - it made this book a pleasure to read. I imagine any business looking to set itself apart will benefit from this book - the explanations and examples can clearly be applied across industries.

Best Must Read since Made to Stick
I have pacing around the house, tracking my Amazon shipment. It came early. Ann's book Content Rules was the highlight of my day. I literally had my pen and highlighter in use by page XX. Its midnight and I had to make myself put down the book, relax and go to sleep. I have never met Ann, but her writing is outstanding, quick concise and funny. After waking my wife up laughing about the content you the reader will write that will enable the readers to be taller faster funnier, with tighter asses and smarter kids, she suggested I move to the computer area of house. Simple the best book on the subject of creating content. The planning preparation and so on thot go into a project like this is impressive. Great stories in the book. I would love to meet you and CC some if you ever come to Kansas City. Great place. Thank you Ann and CC. :) ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

A Fantastic Read!, September 10, 2010
Like many people, I have no desire to disappear. Yet I am immensely curious of two things: 1 - what information the Internet and the world has on me and 2 - If one wanted to, how can they properly get up and go without being traced? How To Disappear provides both answers. The book has an amazingly in-depth outline of erasing your digital footprint. Something that adds to it's charm is the author's method of delivering this fascinating information in a way that is easily understood and at many times truthfully humorous. It is not just a "how to" guide. It is much, much more. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about disappearing (even if you do not want to), determined to disappear, and someone looking for a great read!

It has some helpful hints and is worth reading., September 5, 2010
If you wish to disappear and not be quickly and easily found it has many helpful suggestions on how to avoid the many common mistakes making people easy to find and how to leave false trails. For that it is worth buying. However, the authors deliberately avoid any discussion about changing your identity.

As the authors point out, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it is very expensive and difficult to hide without changing your identity and you certainly cannot hide from the government without changing your identity.

The authors have no experience or expertise about changing your identity so they avoid the issue by claiming it is a bad idea. They do offer one suggestion. That is, to pay someone in an impoverished country $2,000 per year to borrow their identity. However, the authors offer no suggestions as to how to do that. Nevertheless, that one suggestion and examples of how to leave false trails and to avoid common mistakes, makes the book worth buying.

Otherwise, the book is a disappointment because, without changing your identity, as the authors point out, it will cost many thousands of dollars and an extreme amount of time and effort to hide from anyone willing to spend a few thousand dollars to find you.

Therefore, since the book offers no help in hiding from the government, is of little value to most people. The book is of primary value to wealthy individuals that want privacy from individuals (not government) wanting to find them and willing to spend $10,000 or more to do so.

If you are not hiding from the government, most people can just move and not be found since it is unlikely that anyone they know would spend several thousand dollars to find them.

The vast majority of people that need to disappear, need to disappear from the government due to some minor youthful indiscretions such as having sex at age 17 with their 16 year old girlfriend and being placed on the list of sex offenders until age 40 or having a criminal record for smoking a joint. For such individuals, other than the short hint about borrowing someone's identity by paying them $2,000 per year, the book is of no value. The government does not spend money looking for and tracking these individuals. However, their youthful indiscretions prevent them from getting a good job and having a normal life.

A must read!, September 8, 2010
I just finished reading this book, and I just love it! Even if you dont need to "disappear", it has tons of useful tips about privacy. I never realized how much information I gave away about myself until I read this. Everyone should be aware of this.

AWESOME BOOK! BEWARE- YOU'LL DISAPPEAR INTO ITS PAGES WITH FASCINATION!!, October 30, 2010
This book is wonderful-- even for people like me who have no intention of disappearing (except into its pages)! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it no matter what kind of mood I was in because it's like two books in one. It offers serious invaluable advice on the tools one can use to attain/retain as much privacy as possible in this increasingly digitized and invasive un-private world, as well as to stay safe from those seeking us to cause us harm, but it also contains descriptions of cases the author worked on that are fascinating and fun to read! And it's very entertaining to read about some of the crazy people Mr. Ahearn encountered as well as some of the stupid things people do. There are also amusing (often hilarious) asides with words of wisdom and advice from the author, for example:

"Just remember: if two men in trench coats are at your door, it's the FBI. If it's just one man in a trench coat, it's the IRS. Either way, you probably shouldn't open the door."

The book is written in a breezy informal manner that makes it seem as though you're having a conversation with the author at the kitchen table. So to Mr. Ahearn-- much applause and encore please!! And, as for the cases described in the book, they'd sure make a great TV series!!

Interesting reading, but don't try this at home, October 13, 2010
A book such as How to Disappear : Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace, scores very high on the cool factor. Ultimately though, it's one of those books that details things you should not try at home.

Author Frank Ahearn is a professional skip tracer; which is a person who locates other people. The term comes from the word skip being used to describe the person being searched for, and comes from the idiomatic expression to skip town, meaning to depart, perhaps in a rush, and leaving minimal clues behind for someone to trace the skip to a new location. Often these people are wanted by the government, family, spouses, or other authorities.

The book is touted as the "authoritative and comprehensive guide for people who seek to protect their privacy, as well as for anyone who's ever entertained the fantasy of disappearing - whether actually dropping out of sight or by eliminating the traceable evidence of their existence". Those are a number of very different goals.

For those who seek to protect their daily privacy in the physical world, the book provides a lot of good, high-level insights.

Since the author admits he isn't a technology expert, the book doesn't offer significant input on how to ensure online privacy, short of saying that one shouldn't use social media. Readers wanting to protect their online privacy can use effective resources such as CDT's Guide to Online Privacy for such topics.

Most people want to protect their privacy, and while many do entertain a fantasy of simply disappearing, the reality is that true disappearance is extraordinarily difficult and fraught with risk.

At 197 small pages, the book is a quick read and covers all of the key points. The book does have a lot of good details, but isn't the definitive text, as the devil is in the details, and many of those details are missing in the book. The person who truly wants to disappear would need an expert like Ahearn to work with them, rather than simply relying on the book alone.

The danger in a book like this is that it may lead someone to attempt to disappear on a whim. That is a great way to get themselves in a fine mess, often ending up in more trouble than before their aborted disappearance attempt.

The book focuses on 3 key areas: misinformation (destroying all the data known about you), disinformation (creating fake trails) and reformation (act of getting you from origination to destination without leaving any clues).

Some of the books ideas are similar to the federal witness protection program. In the federal program, witnesses are encouraged to keep their first names and choose last names with the same initial in order to make it easier to instinctively use the new identity.

Like the federal witness program, the books notes that in order to prevent the possibility of someone being followed, they should use a convoluted and indirect transportation path before finally reaching the location where they will live under the new identity. This path often involves a long chain of seemingly random routes which are intended to be difficult for a skip tracer to find or anticipate.

The book includes numerous stories of real-world scenarios in which Ahearn was involved with, and shows how to avoid their mistakes.

Many people envision disappearing as being on a beach with endless beers. Ahearn paints a reality involving endless use of disposable cell phones, cash cards, and remote mail boxes. But that is a lonely existence most people don't seem ready for.

Can someone really change themselves? Yes, but it's very expensive and difficult to hide without changing your identity and you certainly cannot hide from the government without changing your identity. The book is ultimately for someone who has a lot of money, as there is no way to create a new life on the cheap.

The book doesn't detail how to create a completely new identity in a new location, something that seemingly only a witness protection program can do, and mainly is about leaving false trails so that those looking for you can't find you.

For the person contemplating disappearing, they must ask themselves if they really want to live a life of endless prepaid phone cards and prepaid credit cards, using only free wireless and disposable USB memory cards as the book suggests. The book is about ensuring that one's old life and new life don't connect. After a few months of that, most people will likely be quite lonely.

The author notes that most people want to disappear for two main reasons: danger or money. Some people deal with stalkers, abusive ex-spouses or someone who came into money and doesn't want friends or family to locate them.

In a recent interview, Ahearn suggested New Zealand is one of the best places to disappear, as it's a long way off and has great beaches, is an English-speaking country and it's easy to acclimate to life there. But for a lifelong Red Sox fan do they really want to root for the New Zealand Warriors rugby team? Does the person understand the cold reality of vegemite?

Ultimately this is an interesting, but impractical book for the vast majority of people. Can one disappear? Perhaps, but it's getting harder, even with an expert like Ahearn. Perhaps the biggest deterrent should be Google StreetView. Even if one moves far away, StreetView is there, ready to announce your location to the world.

For most readers How to Disappear : Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace will be an entertaining book that does have valuable information.

Ultimately, for those considering disappearing, they need to understand the implications of loudly shutting the door on their way out of society. They should contemplate that before they take a course of action they are likely going to regret.

Consider what you might do with a winning lottery ticket, October 11, 2010
This is a compelling little read, though I doubt much of what is presented is all that factual, much less useful to the person in search of such tips. Nonetheless, the entertainment value is real, and the writing style very personable, much as though the author were sitting across the table.

What you'll encounter in the reading is fodder to fuel those palm tree fantasies as you gaze upon that surely winning lottery ticket you bought earlier, and that's certainly worth an evening or two with a few glasses of Chardonnay.

Making it harder and more expensive for someone trying to track you down..., December 5, 2010
While I have my doubts that one can disappear completely without "special assistance" (as in government help or an extreme amount of money), there *are* some ways to make it a lot more difficult to be found by non-government officials. Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan cover a lot of that information in their book How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace. This is not a large encyclopedic manual on how to eliminate your existence; rather it's more a handbook on how to make it more difficult to be traced (and a lot more expensive for those determined to do so).

Contents:
I'm Frank. Nice To Meet You; Meet Your Enemy - The Skip Tracer; A Skip Tracer's Best Friends; Time To Disappear; Misinformation; Tracks And Clues In The Home; Disinformation; Your Reformation Arsenal; Reformation; How Not To Disappear; Disappear From Identity Thieves; Disappear In Social Media; Disappear From A Frog; Disappear From A Stalker; Disappear From The Country; Pseudocide 101; Final Thoughts; Acknowledgments; Index

Ahearn was a professional skip tracer, a person paid to track people down. Using both legal and illegal methods, he was usually able to find whoever he was going after as they nearly always left a trail of some sort. In Disappear, he takes the other side of the equation and talks about what someone would need to do to make it more difficult and expensive to find them. While some of them are obvious (stop using social media, don't use your credit cards), others are more tricky and require some time and effort (and money) to put into place. For instance, in one case he had a person open a small checking account and the ATM card was given to a friend who traveled extensively. The friend made small charges in various cities, making it look like the person was moving around a great deal. He coupled that with a visit to a different city to look at apartments and have a credit check run. Any skip trace looking to find the person would have to pursue those leads, all of which would lead to dead ends. Yes, the skip trace may eventually pull the right thread at some point, but the costs to the person looking for you go up significantly.

If you take the information in this book for what it's worth, it's a good reference tool and a fun read. Thinking this is the equivalent of the Witness Protection Program "how-to" manual is a mistake, as it's not. And if the federal authorities are after you, there's little in here that will keep them at bay for very long. But if you're trying to disappear from the annoying ex or a crazy who has a beef with you, How To Disappear might be the key for keeping a step or two ahead of them.

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed

Not a total waste of time..., November 26, 2010
While not a total waste of time, the book is a combination of the obvious (don't use your usual credit card or call with your usual mobile phone) with the somewhat ridiculous (setting up multiple drop boxes which forward to different addresses depending on the return address of the package), glued together with some tough-guy sounding fluff. There are some good ideas sprinkled around, and the chapter on escaping stalkers and the like seemed worthwhile. (Without that I would have given 2 stars.) All in all, a book twice or thrice the length it should have been, which will be of absolutely no use to most people, but with a somewhat interesting peak inside a world most never come across.

Great book and I have a recommendation for his next one, October 23, 2010
I loved this book. I learned a few things from it. I learned about mis -information, dis-information and reformation. I learned to hired a PI to see how good of a job you did disappearing. I love the real live cases he had.

The only recommendation, I have I always like books that teach something to tie things together in the final chapter, a summary, a breakdown of the concepts.

I am curious about subjects I will never do -but people disappear every day.

Recommendation for the author, next book: do a book on disappearing from the government(as another reviewer commented) and as technology is running our life, get an expert on technology to enhanced the book.

Kudos to the author, great book.

Excellent Resource, October 21, 2010
For a small book, this book is packed with info and helpful tips for anyone interested in disappearing. The author gets right to the point on the different subjects without wasting words or time. ... Read more

Editorial Review

IN LITTLE MORE THAN HALF A DECADE, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects—even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran.

Veteran technology reporter David Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebook’s key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished, and where it is going next. He chronicles its successes and missteps, and gives readers the most complete assessment anywhere of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the central figure in the company’s remarkable ascent. This is the Facebook story that can be found nowhere else.

How did a nineteen-year-old Harvard student create a company that has transformed the Internet and how did he grow it to its current enormous size? Kirkpatrick shows how Zuckerberg steadfastly refused to compromise his vision, insistently focusing on growth over profits and preaching that Facebook must dominate (his word) communication on the Internet. In the process, he and a small group of key executives have created a company that has changed social life in the United States and elsewhere, a company that has become a ubiquitous presence in marketing, altering politics, business, and even our sense of our own identity. This is the Facebook Effect. ... Read more

Reviews

Incredibly Insightful Account of the True Facebook Story
I've just finished reading The Facebook Effect, and it was like a movie I didn't want to end. I'm considering reading it again. As a budding internet startup entrepreneur, learning from major successes, such as Facebook, is incredibly valuable. The problem is, where can you learn about the juicy details that essentially positioned a company like Facebook to be so ubiquitous? Details such as:

- how Facebook gained so much traffic early on
- how they scaled the site school by school
- the major decisions Mark and his team grappled with at every stage
- the strategy and thought process that went through Zuckerberg's mind
- how they raised their first dollar of investment
- what sort of information did they pitch their first professional investors
- etc...

It includes everything that an internet startup entrepreneur would want to know, encapsulated in one of the world's most fascinating phenomenon -- The Facebook Effect.

Enjoy.

Engaging read
Kirkpatrick was for years one of Fortune's best writers, and that talent is on full display here. He assesses the often broad and complex situations around facebook deftly, in accessible and subtle ways. But it's when he lets his interview subjects speak in their own words -- from founder to current and past executives to investors -- that the book really shines. It's better than a good book, it's an important book.

Get affected (yes its the right affect; is effect ever a verb?)
It's hard to comprehend an internet user who hasn't heard of Facebook, sure there are many out there who don't feel the need to use the application, and some who stubbornly resist signing up for various reasons (usually privacy fears or strange phobias of their friendships being somehow changed irreparably by the experience) but the chances are that if you've logged onto the World Wide Web you're familiar with the phenomenon known as Facebook.

In this work, Kirkpatrick takes us through a candid journey with Mark Zuckerberg, the brains behind the whole thing. It's a surprising journey in many ways, for one thing - compared to other `phenomenon' entrepreneurial tales, Facebook's is quite short, spanning barely more than half a decade. Despite this, there is more than enough material for a full non-fiction book, (and a feature length film.)

Most of the information for The Facebook Effect is straight from Zuckerberg himself, who like his creation, is open to sharing details of his personal and professional life with anyone who cares to see them. That is except for the specific details of a few lawsuits brought against Zuckerberg for theft of ideas - which unfortunately for us curious readers, were settled with confidentiality agreements meaning we'll likely never know the exact details of what went down behind closed doors.

The Facebook Effect, is really a story of delirious success, both financial and world changing. Even for those not so keen on geekery and computers, the political wrangling of the company supplies plenty of drama. For those heavily into Facebook, or at least who have been keeping up with the web app's changes over the past few years, you'll enjoy reading about the developments you've already experienced from the side of the developers - in particular I loved the irony when the `newsfeed' was added it allowed users easy access to groups they might want to join, which promptly lead to mass numbers joining anti-newsfeed groups.

Love it or leave it, Facebook has done what Zuckerberg intended it to - it has changed the way we conduct our social relationships - and thus changed society itself. Employees, employers and public figures are re-evaluating how they manage their very public profiles on Facebook, with some pundits predicting that rather than people tending towards circumspect and professional Facebook profiles, society will just come to accept that Facebook will reveal certain aspects of our lives that we don't necessarily want public, and not judge too harshly. Even if you don't have a profile yourself, there is no way you can prevent others from posting photos of you, or revealing personal information about yourself (although one might question why said acquaintance is doing so) so perhaps a society that doesn't judge our drunken photos too harshly is more preferable to trying desperately to keep such things from the internet.

My only real criticism of this book is it left me wishing that I had a college friend on the verge of creating a billion dollar company who just needed a small amount of investment to get started - and that I got to be one of those lucky fools who gave thousands only to have the investment return in the millions...

Fantastic
The book is an amazing read. If you know anything about Facebook and are curious about how technology is evolving the world, you won't be able to put it down. It includes the backstory and all the drama of how Facebook grew from nothing to the newest world changing company of Silicon Valley. It has all the incredible details that you will never see anywhere else. and you feel like you are there and rooting for the heros.

Fast and interesting read
After seeing "The Social Network" I wanted to learn more about the story of Facebook. This book is an amazing commentary on the quirky nature of Mark Zuckerburg, the inter-workings of venture capitalism, and the tech behind the site itself. Sometimes non-fiction books can get dry and boring, but this book kept me intrigued.

Intelligent, Insightful and Enjoyable
I originally purchased this book because I thought it was required reading for someone like me who works in Silicon Valley. However, after a few chapters, I realized this could be one of the top ten business books of the decade and...it was fun to read.
Here is why I found it so enlightening:

-The book was filled with anecdotal stories of incredible financial and business growth challenges, potential technology disasters and public opinion/communication crises--that for the most, were handled swiftly and successfully. Valuable lessons learned were scattered throughout the book, cover to cover. The author made you feel like you were part of the team taking the company through its first five years of phenomenal growth.

-Mark Zuckerberg. You will learn about one of the most visionary CEOs of our time by the way he handled the above mentioned situations, his passion for transparency, philosophy on the "gift economy" and vision of global communication and via a number of direct quotes that the author chose to include (and noted below):

"The best thing we can do is to move smoothly with the world around us, and to have constant competition, not build walls."(commenting on the possible integration of Facebook across the Web)

"We're a vehicle that gives people the power to share information, so we are driving that trend. We also have to live by it." (commenting on user backlash and potential government intervention)

-Finally leveraging social media as a global communications platform; the book contains a bevy of inspirational examples of the potential for positive change--a glimpse into the future, that we should all be aware of.

Excellent
Easily one of the best books I have read this year. A page turner that will give you a more positive view of Zuckerberg versus what the movie portrays of him. Read the book and you will enjoy the movie even more.

A Must Have to Really Understand Facebook.
"Every person under 40 knows Facebook and every person has heard of it. The Facebook Effect is for those of us who have barely heard of it and it takes the Facebook story from the 19 year olds in a Harvard dormitory room to Facebook's social website and business media number one role in the universe. Is a Twitter book next?"

Great Reading
This is a very good book on how facebook was created and became the giant it is today. It is a fast ready and enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone who's interested in learning the history of facebook! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

Practical, no-nonsense guide to social media
I've been reading social media marketing books for about a year, and most of them over-promise and under-deliver. This one is different. For the first time, I feel like I "get" it.

It's filled with no-nonsense, practical tips that actually work instead of pie-in-the-sky talk about what social media "can" do.

I started reading the ebook on an airplane, and wasn't quite done when the plane landed -- so I made my husband drive, so I could finish it. If you'd ever ridden with my husband, you'd know that meant I just didn't want to stop reading.

If you want a step-by-step guide to what to do -- and what to avoid -- this is the book for you. I've been a marketer for a long time, so I have some habits to unlearn according to this author. She explained why in a way I can understand, so I might actually follow her advice.

Excellent, Practical Guide to Using Social Media Effectively
I also read my book on the plane ride home and read it from cover to cover. This is a very practical guide to the 3 pillars for Social Media (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn), as well as very, very useful information and strategies for video and a great Q and A section.

In addition there is a workbook and I love that Shama has created a way to for the reader to access the most up to date information in an online format. An easy to read, easy to follow guide for those looking to really amp up one's presence and build your own online community.

Who Could Dethrone Claude Hopkins?
When I sat down to enjoy Shama Kabani's new book, the Zen of Social Media Marketing, I was expecting to absorb a couple chapters a night during my quest to take my online marketing prowess to the next level.

I read the entire thing in one evening.

Not since Claude Hopkins' 1923 classic Scientific Advertising has a marketing book held my attention so intently. Shama, a lively and personable genius in her own right, didn't see any need to fluff her book up with generalities and useless anecdotes. Rather, every word, every case study, every personal story is crafted to bring the reader into a deeper understanding of how to lay an effective social media marketing foundation.

I like authors who respect my time and give me exactly what I need. Shama does both.

It's no surprise that digital marketing guru Chris Brogan chose to write the book's foreword. Brogan's philosophy of putting people over platforms aligns perfectly with Shama's style of nurturing very real, human relationships through online mediums. She sees the internet as an extension of (not a replacement for!) community and draws on common real world interactions like coffee houses and office-networking events to illustrate her point.

Chapter one is all about the philosophy of online marketing. "If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time" is what my mother always says. Shama writes: "online marketing is the art and science of...leveraging the internet to get your message across so that you can move people to action." The message is clear: you don't do social media marketing because your competitors do; you do it because it has the ability to "convert strangers into consumers and consumers into customers."

"Strategy should always come before tactics."

Shama evidently prefers her readers to know where they are going and why they are on the journey before she expends any energy on telling them how to operate the car.

The rest of the book is packed with tactics on how to relate to your audience using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and web video. I pride myself on being a decent online marketer, and even I found myself taking notes on when to engage people through Facebook Groups and when to encourage the following of a Facebook Page. Should I care how many Twitter followers I have? Shama says I should, but not in the ego-stroking way I may be inclined to.

The only disappointment I faced was that my tech-savvy, Star Trek watching side wasn't fed. Not because the material wasn't solid, but because...

Shama speaks the language of small business.

You may not be a marketer; you may sew quilts or manufacture plantation shutters. Shama understands, and she writes with you in mind. Easy to remember acronyms and formulas, like Visability + Credibility = Success, and succinct, numbered checklists will help you implement her recommendations immediately.

I should quit talking before I begin to ramble. The bottom line is: social media marketing is something you, a small business owner, can participate in quite successfully. Shama Kabani's book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing, will show you how.

A True Authority on the Subject of Social Media!
As an business advisor, I have had my clients tell me about every so-called social media expert that has come across their desk in the past 18 months. Many of these experts have created white papers, e-books, razzle-dazzle powerpoints and webinars. At the end of the day, when I look at the stuff they have created, it's all regurgitated nonsense from the last expert.

Shama, on the other hand, is a THOUGHT LEADER in the industry. She has something new, fresh and innovative to say about social media. She teaches you the WHY and the HOW. She has a real and verifiable track record. Our clients who have worked with her are experiencing record breaking results. That makes Shama AUTHENTIC. So if you're interested in my $0.02, then here it is...

Finally! A true authority on the subject of social media has broken through the utter noise of get-rich-quick-with-social-media hysteria. Shama takes the mystery and hype out of social media and gives readers a practical step-by-step action plan to start, grow, measure, expand and optimize their online presence. It is a must-read for any marketing professional, C-level executive or entrepreneur. Her conversational writing style, numerous case studies and "how-to" guides with screen shots makes learning and implementing almost elementary. It will be required reading for all our clients.

This Just In: Social Zen is a Game Changer
I have read many books on social media, and this one far outshines all the others. Great, practical and easy to follow advice on how to leverage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, video, and blogging to further your brand and your business. Social media works, but you have to have a strategy, and this book definitely makes an easy-to-follow plan of action to get you noticed online.

In addition, the fact that the book is live and is online with monthly updates to the fast-paced and ever changing world of social media is invaluable.

Shama is a rockstar in the digital marketing world, and this book is further proof. I give it "two thumbs up"! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse.

The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web’s first designers made crucial choices (such as making one’s presence anonymous) that have had enormous—and often unintended—consequences. What’s more, these designs quickly became “locked in,” a permanent part of the web’s very structure.

Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.

Lanier also shows:
How 1960s antigovernment paranoia influenced the design of the online world and enabled trolling and trivialization in online discourse
How file sharing is killing the artistic middle class;
How a belief in a technological “rapture” motivates some of the most influential technologists
Why a new humanistic technology is necessary.

Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defense of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture. ... Read more

Reviews

A critical take on Web 2.0: People first, January 13, 2010
"Technology criticism," the author writes, "should not be left to the Luddites." Jaron Lanier is certainly no Luddite, but in this "manifesto" he blasts the Web 2.0 mentality, highlights long-standing technology lock-ins, and ranges far and wide in his criticisms of the Internet, computing, and the cultures surrounding the two today.

The core of his argument is that the achievements of the Web 2.0 collaborations are neither exciting, nor new. "Let's suppose that, back in the 1980s, I had said, `In a quarter century, when the digital revolution has made great progress and computer chips are millions of times faster than they are now, humanity will finally win the prize of being able to write a new encyclopedia and a new version of UNIX!' It would," he writes, "have sounded utterly pathetic." He's referring to Wikipedia and Linux, two clear successes of collaborative construction. And furthermore, the intellectual work of those thousands of people have been undervalued, in fact, they're unpaid volunteers. The middle classes have spent their hours working without paid to build wonderful constructs for the profits of major companies. Hmmm...as I write this book review, unpaid, with Amazon looking to earn money from selling more copies of this book...

Ranging further across the Web 2.0 field, Jaron notes the Facebook and Myspace pages in their prescribed formats with individuals reduced to favorite books, movies, five options for politics, and six options for relationship status. Other parts look at technology lock-in, with the example of MIDI. It was developed in the early 1980s for keyboard synthesizer control and output, and reproduces the nuances of a keyboard but not, for example, a violin. It would be hard to get support for a new, broader tool. "A thousand years from now, when a descendant of ours is traveling at relativistic speeds to explore new star systems, she will probably be annoyed by some awful beepy MIDI-driven music to alert her that the antimatter filter needs to be recalibrated."

Well, I certainly don't agree with everything Jaron has to say, even if I do fondly recall the handmade (with blink tags) web pages from before the AOL deluge (the September without end) when the masses discovered the Internet. There's a lot of crap online, but then again, there's a lot of crap everywhere. I can happily share my family photos over Facebook with people who barely are computer literate, and still be critical of the silly lock-ins of the Facebook pages. Lanier is not a Luddite though, he doesn't want us to smash the digital world, but wants to criticize it to make it better. Nothing wrong with that, whether we agree with his criticism or not.

Thought provoking and worthy of your time., January 15, 2010
In his book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, Jaron Lanier becomes a solitary voice in the wilderness shouting as loudly as he can that all is not well with the virtual world nor with the tools that make the virtual world possible....software and computers. That this book was written by an insider from the world of the Internet should get everyone's attention.

Jaron Lanier is a household name for those who follow the world of computers and virtual reality and his book is nothing more than a manifesto warning us that there is a dark side to the Internet. Even innocuous websites such as Facebook and Google, "lords of the cloud" do not escape Lanier's expose. "Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans" and that, in the end, leads to "mob" behavior. Utterly true.

As I flipped through the book, the point that resonated most loudly to me was the impact `anonymity' has had on our virtual world (and maybe the real world as well). I can remember visiting a chat room that was dedicated to "Books and Literature" in 2000 or 2001. As a librarian I was naturally drawn to a space that I thought would be filled with others like me who had a love of the written word and for good books. Did that assumption back fire? You bet! What I found was a chat area filled with virtual people who wanted to chat about anything but books and literature. If I were to post a question about what people were reading or what they thought of a given book I was torn (virtually) from limb to limb. Having served in the military I have a pretty good operational understanding of foul language, and I'm pretty good at throwing the words around when necessary. However, that this language would be used in that particular venue by people who could remain anonymous was a shock. I'm pretty certain that most of the visitors to that website hadn't read a book in years and had no problem violating the most basic rules of civility. Lanier is correct when he argues that this is not a step in the right direction. (Please forgive this personal observation)

Obviously I'm a fan of the virtual world. I post reviews online for free (which is another point Lanier makes) but the joy isn't the posting of reviews but in reading the books; real books. What Lanier has to say should be of interest to all of us.

You Are Not a Gadget is written for the ordinary reader with a minimal background in computers. Lanier floats from idea to idea not necessarily fully exploring a point, but instead simply raising an issue and then moving on. Very effective!

I predict that You Are Not a Gadget is destined to become a cultural icon in the future. We now point to books such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and I'm Ok, You're Ok by Dr. Thomas Harris as books that changed society and altered the future. I suspect that You Are Not a Gadget may become that type of sign post.

I highly recommend.

Peace always.

You are a fluke of the universe. Take full advantage of it., January 30, 2010
What Jaron Lanier does is take us up 50,000 feet and allow us to view things with perspective. He says we have been overwhelmed by the unnoticed "lock-in" and simply adjust and reduce ourselves to fit the requirements of online dating, social media, forums, and the software we employ. Web 2.0 is homogenizing humanity, taking us down to the lowest common denominator instead of allowing or encouraging us to bloom in different directions. Everything we now "enjoy" seems to be backward looking - music is sampled and retro, news is criticized mercilessly, but very few are creating it any more, relationships are Tweets...

It sounds like Lanier recommends friends don't let friends communicate via Facebook - they do it on the phone or in person. But the direction we are taking instead reduces interaction, kills creativity, journalism, music, science....it's not as pretty as predicted.

These are truly valuable criticisms, and this is an important, if flawed book. Flawed because after a hundred page pounding of logic and evidence, Lanier spends the second hundred pages telling us how wonderful it is to be a scientist and play with humans and cuttlefish. I was particularly annoyed with a gratuitous couple of paragraphs devoted to swearing, which which he says might be connected to parts of the brain controlling orifices and obscenity.

Well, to my knowledge, swearing is purely cultural, not physiological. In Quebec, the worst swearing is against the Catholic Church, Translated into English "Christ Tabernacle" sounds like something WC Fields said to skirt the censors. But it's the most vile thing you can say in polite conversation in Montreal. On the other hand Motherf----r doesn't translate into French at all. And what's any of this got to do with online reductionism? Zilch - is my point. The last 100 pages is full of such diversions.

Others have pointed to other sections they disagree with, and they all seem to occur in the last half of the book. But don't let that deter you, as it distracted him. The original message is important. People create. Software does not. Software restricts. Don't leave anonymous contributions. Build a creative website of your own design. Probe deeply and uniquely - beyond Wikipedia. Reflect before you blog.

Lanier says our humanity and creativity are being put at risk by the miasma foisted on us by the incredible leveling machine of the internet. Instead of becoming exciting, the internet has become boring. Instead of creating new music, it has assassinated the entire industry. Instead of bringing people together, it lets them off the hook. That's worth exploring, and for about 100 pages, Lanier does a grand job of it.

one of the best books in a long while, January 15, 2010
This is a very interesting book. Its a critique of the "internet culture" which has up until now been mostly beyond challenge. The author hits exactly on the key problems of the culture: Collectivism, mob mentality, conformity and the marginalization of the individual. He also hits upon the problem that small decisions made by individuals can lock people into mindsets or patterns of behavior.

Its an excellent book in highlighting the problems of the era. But it doesn't really provide any easy answers about how to change things. And the unfortunate truth is that many of the problems are less to do with technology than human nature.

The joke of "free" software is that it isn't "free" at all. It always comes with a licence agreement which spells out that duties of the individual to the "collective". The innovation of Linux and its licence over the works that had preceeded it was that any additions to Linux belonged to the collective. An individual can't ever own anything.

Wikipedia is even worse. Want to create your own facts or history? Create a web-page where you say something about a particular subject, then quote the webpage as the source for what you want to say on Wikipedia. Suddenly your web page is the equal of any scholarship in the whole of human history.

In pointing to the growth of mob mentality across society and the accompanying anti-intellectual climate, the author has hit upon *the* key philosophical issue in the new century. This is important and necessary book that deserves to be read.

=====

While my review remains positive, I want to point out one major problem in the book. The account of events on p. 125-126 is full of misinformation and errors. The LISP machine in retrospect was a horrible idea. It died because the RISC and MIPS CPU efforts on the west coast were a much better idea. Putting high-level software (LISP) into electronics was a bad idea.

Stallman's disfunctional relationship with Symbolics is badly misrepresented. Stallman's licence was not the first or only free software licence. Where stallman was unique was in that his licenses are more about enforcing the rights of the collective and claiming the work of others than anything to do with making things free. And often the growth of the so-called culture was being driven by personal feuds with the BSD community, with Symbolics and with anyone who dared touch the holy EMACS editor. Much of the time, the so-called movement seemed more about picking fights and asserting control than anything to do with makings things free.

And the irony of Linus Torvalds is that he didn't follow in their footsteps. Stallman and company were driven by flawed collectivism into a massive failed project known as "Hurd". Linus was successful in that he brought an individualist mindset, a simple set of ideas and the ability to get along with other people to his effort. Linux isn't that way anymore, but the reasons that Linux (with no reasources) was successful and the Hurd (with huge resources) was a massive failure presents a case study in how collectivism fails.

There have been any number of massive collectivist failures. To list a few: The OSI networking protocols, the ADA programming language, The first generation of microkernel operating systems, OSF/1 (and the OSF in general), any number of initiatives at the IETF.... Things that have tended to be successful over time are things that grew up in secret.

And calling Linux an "antique" was really strange as is the idea that it represents a 1970s mindset. The fact is that all kinds of people have tried new radical designs for operating systems since the 1980s and they have all generally been dismal failures (like Hurd from GNU). And the fact is, many people who worked on such things discovered over time that investing creativity at the lower levels of the system was generally a bad idea. Abstract entities were best created at the higher levels of systems where hardware and operating system would stay out of the way as much as possible.

A brilliant work of Pragmatic "Techno-Philosophy", January 27, 2010
I had never heard of Jaron Lanier before reading this book; I bought it for one reason only - a blurb on the back cover by Lee Smolin (The Life of the Cosmos) - and I am so glad I did.

Essentially, Lanier has written a well founded criticism of the uses and abuses of technology in the world today. One of the main culprits in Lanier's view is the metaphor that people are computers and that we can ultimately reduce descriptions of both humans and computers to simple processes of information exchange. Lanier rightly believes this metaphor is inherently damaging to peoples psyche's and to society in general - this is a view I share with Lanier. Some of his targets include the "computationalism" philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter; "eliminative materialists" like Patricia and Paul Churchland; biologically heavy-handed academics like Richard Dawkins and Christof Koch; and the over-the-top Singularity preachers like Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology) and Vernor Vinge (Rainbows End). There is much missing from these people's reductionist approach - People Are Not Computers (hence the title: You Are Not a Gadget). I praise Lanier for his sensible, pragmatic and inspiring manifesto on this issue and his call for a more humanistic approach. He must really feel like the lone voice in the wilderness.

Throughout Lanier's work, I couldn't help but be reminded of the general ennui that seems to be sweeping through our culture these days. Lanier has captured the universal angst that some of my other favorite books speak about too (Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America and The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America). I am definitely adding it to this small collection of books as a reminder to myself to break free from the historical "lock-in" that seems to come as technological niches get filled (think Google, Facebook, Amazon (which I do love), iTunes, MS Windows, et al)) Try something new Lanier says. Don't simply rely on the Matthew effect, Cumulative Advantage, or what Michael Shermer calls the Bestseller Effect: "It takes only a tiny group of engineers to create technology that can shape the entire future of human experience with incredible speed. Therefore, crucial arguments about the human relationship with technology should take place between developers and users before such direct manipulations are designed. This book is about those arguments."

Some cool new terminology I learned: open-culture, cloud, hive-mind, noosphere, and lulz. I love this book and highly recommend it. Thanks Lee Smolin!

The Coming Down of Great Expectations, February 26, 2010
The first thing that must be said about Jaron Lanier's "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto" is that it a very intricate book, full of several different arguments and lines of thought. It might be best to say that it is a manifesto containing several submanifestos. His arguments against the current directions in "web 2.0" technology are many and multifaceted, taking us through questions of the effectiveness of capitalism, how culture evolves, whether there can really be "wisdom in crowds," and even the nature of what "human" is.

If we have to sum up the book into an overall point or argument, here's how I'd do it: web technology, which was hoped to lead to vigorous innovation and individualization, has done precisely the opposite. On the consumption side, the idea of the "wisdom of crowds" has made the group (Lanier says "hive mind") more important and more "real" than voices of individuals. On the production side, the internet has led less to innovative production than to the recycling of old ideas in new forms, while making it hard for inventors/pioneers to make a living being creative. (Yes, I know I am missing some things in this description but, as mentioned, Lanier's work is very hard to sum up with concision.)

Lanier believes that there are two big reasons for this. First, we are not using our conception of humanity to drive how we shape technology so much as we are allowing technology to shape how we define humanity. A shining example is our faith in the "wisdom of crowds" as exemplified by our increasing obsession with all things wiki. Lanier reminds us that, in reality, there is no such "wisdom in crowds" because crowds are simply collections of individuals making individual decisions. (I would also add that "wisdom of crowds" is a literal impossibility as wisdom can only happen embodied in a point-of-view, of which a crowd has none.)

Secondly, Lanier believes that innovation may be lagging behind expectations because of our belief in the "information wants to be free" model. Yes, this has benefits, like offering information in a way that is accessible to...well...most. But it has the disadvantage of removing the incentives provided by markets out of a market. Lanier often uses the example of music and art: it was thought that the internet would allow more artists to make livings off of their art by removing the middle-men and allowing artists direct access to consumers. But with so much free content and exponentially increased competition, it is becoming even harder for artists to (a) get noticed in the milieu and (b) make a living off of their creativity.

While Lanier does not directly champion capitalism (he does contemplate its goods and bads), I think it is fair to argue that Lanier is championing a market system as the surest spur to innovation. Here, I must quote him directly: ""Why are so many of the more sophisticated examples of code in the online world - like the page-rank algorithm in the top search engines or like Adobe's Flash - the results of proprietary development? Why did the adored iphone come out of what many regarded as the most closed, tyrannically managed software - development shop on earth? An honest empiricist must conclude that while the open approach has been able to create lovely, polished copies, it hasn't been so good at creating notable originals." Lanier is not against the open source movement (think Youtube) altogether, but does present good pragmatic arguments as to why it is severely limited.

In a book so rich and varied, I certainly can't say I agree with everything Lanier puts forth. One of the major criticisms I have of the book is that while Lanier sees the internet's failure to meet expectations as a problem with the internet, he never blames the expectations. By example, Lanier bemoans the fact that much music created in the past 15 years (with technology) hasn't been wholly innovative, as he thought it would be. But I would remind him that such whole-cloth innovation has always been rare. Jazz, he says, was innovative, as were the Bealtes experiments with multi-track recording. Why nothing like that now? Well, Jazz used the same musical forms and concepts of Dixieland before it and ragtime before that. And the Beatles multitrack experiments didn't sound THAT different from the rock and roll which preceded it. Similarly, Lanier bemoans the fact that Wikipedia is simply the combination of the existing ideas of the encyclopedia and usenet. Okay, but couldn't it just be that the encyclopedia and usenet were such good ideas, that combining them is better than scrapping them and inventing from whole-cloth? Long and short, Lanier expected the type of whole-cloth invention out of the internet that never really existed before the internet.

There are several other areas where I think Lanier's arguments are weak (and several places where I think he argues against "straw man" positions held by only a few). I will not get into them as this isn't the place. What I will say is that I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. Even though I am sure everyone will find areas of agreement AND disagreement with Lanier, every reader will think very deeply as a result of what he writes. He is neither a luddite nor a techno-utopian, neither a reductionist or a mysterian, and neither a techno-anarchist or techno-Maoist. But he is a challenging thinker who deserves to be thought about.

Finally someone wrote this book!, February 8, 2010
There have been several book-length arguments about how the Internet has degraded content, culture, and creativity. Previous books in this vein have included Clifford Stoll's Silicon Snake Oil, Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism, and Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur. The first two of these are unreadable, and Keen's book is undone by his snarky tone.

Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget is not only far better than any of these but is also the only one that offers cogent explanations for why the Internet is the way it is, not just opinionated rants. He explains how technological design decisions made 30-40 years ago led to aspects of the Internet that are undesirable, such as repressions of positive human qualities such as individual creativity, industriousness, and responsibility.

He also shows how Internet content business models benefit no one except so-called "lords of the cloud" such as Google and Facebook; moreover, they lead to devaluation of content from both cultural and economic perspectives. He tackles the emerging "Music 2.0" business models that Internet polyannas/apologists expect to thrive in the new age and debunks them one by one.

Some of the theoretical and philosophical arguments Lanier makes in this book are hard to follow (the philosophy stuff in Part 1) or seem far-fetched (the discussions of cephalopods towards the end). But I view them as part of his effort to create a serious framework to back up his assertions.

This book needs to achieve the same level of notoriety as the Cluetrain Manifesto of ten years ago. It's just as important.

On You are not a Gadget, April 7, 2010
In You are not a Gadget Jaron Lanier purposes that the emergence of web 2.0, cloud computing, and the "hive mind" of humanity are beginning to stifle creativity, individualism, and expression in the human race. He believes a paradigm shift has occurred (and is rapidly continuing to occur) in the last two decades that is reducing our fundamental human-ness. I find his ideas fascinating.

The book starts out speaking about the limitations inherent in our current technology due to lock-in as many of the programming languages currently in use today were written ten, twenty, thirty years ago. A good example is MIDI. MIDI was created to be a simple mime of a synthesizer on a computer, but MIDI only specifies certain notes in a limited range (like the keys on a piano). Pick up a saxophone or start to sing and there are many more possible sounds than can be produced using MIDI; the technology is so embedded in everything we do now that it's locked-in.

Lainer stands in contrast to proponents of the free/open culture movement; most free culture advocates perceive themselves as rebellious and liberal but Lainer posits that they are the conservative ones. He makes a great point in that many of our best pieces of software have come from closed systems - i.e. the iPhone or Adobe Flash. This quote sums up his view nicely: "If we choose to pry culture away from capitalism while the rest of life is still capitalistic, culture will become a slum." I think a happy medium does exist, but is currently not present in efforts such as Creative Commons licensing (though it's certainly a start).

"Am I accusing all of those hundreds of millions of users of social networking sites of reducing themselves in order to be able to use the services? Well yes, I am. [...] A real friendship outght to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other. Each acquaintance is an alien, a well of unexplored difference in the experience of life that cannot be imagined or accessed in any way but through genuine interaction. The idea of friendship in database-filtered social networks is certainly reduced from that." Sure all of that is true, but that all depends on how we define and value various words. I don't consider all of my 1,192 "Facebook friends" to be my close friends in real life, many are people that I've met along the way and simply want to keep in touch with occasionally. I realized shortly after reading that chapter that I was being small. I grew up straddling the analog and digital ages and I know both. Lanier is looking beyond that at future generations that will grow up on Facebook, Twitter, and other web 2.0 networks.

I've found great joy in people I've met on the internet and proceeded to meet in person, many of who have become great friends. I've been meeting people from online communities for nearly a decade now and it's never been weird or creepy, aside from the middle school dance feeling that might occur for the first few minutes. To be fair, Lainer does spend about a page or two praising this result of the web, but I don't think he gives it enough credit.

One point I have to strongly disagree with is Lanier's assertion that musical progress has been greatly slowed and everything is just "retro, retro, retro." He says most people in their 20s can't differentiate between 90s and 00s music. Can you tell me that there's anything that sounds like The Postal Service or The Knife from the 20th century? Those are just two examples off the top of my head but there's a plethora of original music out there right now that is distinct to our time. I'm also not sure why musical genres and trends have to be spliced into ten year increments that coincide neatly with decades, but that's just an aside. Musical genres have splintered and there's isn't currently an overarching archetype, but I would say that's simply because we have access to so much music and record companies no longer have as much power to set the standard for what is appropriate for the masses. The masses decide for themselves by finding new music on the internet.

I found this book to be a fantastic thought exercise and it made me take a hard look at my technological worldview. I wish the conclusion was a more coherent and non-tangential; Lanier goes on to talk about cephlopods for several pages at the end of the book.

My life is seeped in web 2.0; this review itself is sending to four different web 2.0 platforms after I hit the publish button. We as a culture and society have become so engrossed in these platforms that I think it's important to step back and evaluate exactly what it is we're doing. I hope there's a compromise that exists between totally free and open culture and closed systems; I suppose we'll find out.

We're Not Gadgets Yet, But...., February 6, 2010
This is the sort of book I normally avoid, a compilation of jargon filled columns and short bits written for other outlets mashed into a book. But here's the thing, if you haven't read Lanier's work before, you should give this book a look, if only for this thought provoking quote on Facebook: "The real customer is the advertiser of the future, but this creature has yet to appear at the time this is being written. The whole artifice, the whole idea of fake friendship, is just bait laid by the lords of the clouds to lure hypothetical advertisers--we might call them messianic advertisers--who might someday show up." So much of the Digital Age is built around making money on things we once never associated with the material world, things like friendship (Facebook, My Space) and love (eHarmony), sex (so many porn sites). In some ways, the internet is one big advertising medium, and it's come to control so much of our world, influence our decisions, and to dominate our lives. And as someone who works with his hands, I worry a lot about "free content" and the devaluing of craft. This book grapples with that, and a lot more. Recommended for anyone who thinks deeply on these matters, or who wonders where the digital world is leading us, and how we can set a new path.

Slightly naive but nevertheless insightful, March 15, 2010
Lanier certainly has a different vibe than most famous technologists. Since late 1980s he was warning us that the cult of databases would lead us to a limited notion of personhood, that through binary choices we will start to think about ourselves in a more mechanized way. This makes his line of thought close to that of Sherry Turkle and -if we dig deeper - with the foucauldian concept of grids of specifications and grand narrations. Very insightful and profound thinking, a valid critique of all things Web 2.0.

Alas, Lanier is hardly an accomplished scholar in the field of social sciences - he is a technologist and an artist but neither a sociologist or psychologist. As such, he lacks the perspective which could help him see how his own rant assumes a certain vision of personhood and human 'nature' which came to being with the rise of Western individualism - not more than 100-150 years ago. While Lanier's voice is valuable as one of the very few enlightened luddites, he still fails to join a broader discourse about changing frameworks of human knowledge and self-identification.

Won't mention some looney ideas like songles or cephalopods. Only the 1st part of the book is readable. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Richard A. Clarke warned America once before about the havoc terrorism would wreak on our national security -- and he was right. Now he warns us of another threat, silent but equally dangerous. Cyber War is a powerful book about technology, government, and military strategy; about criminals, spies, soldiers, and hackers. This is the first book about the war of the future -- cyber war -- and a convincing argument that we may already be in peril of losing it.

Cyber War goes behind the "geek talk" of hackers and computer scientists to explain clearly and convincingly what cyber war is, how cyber weapons work, and how vulnerable we are as a nation and as individuals to the vast and looming web of cyber criminals. From the first cyber crisis meeting in the White House a decade ago to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the electrical tunnels under Manhattan, Clarke and coauthor Robert K. Knake trace the rise of the cyber age and profile the unlikely characters and places at the epicenter of the battlefield. They recount the foreign cyber spies who hacked into the office of the Secretary of Defense, the control systems for U.S. electric power grids, and the plans to protect America's latest fighter aircraft.

Economically and militarily, Clarke and Knake argue, what we've already lost in the new millennium's cyber battles is tantamount to the Soviet and Chinese theft of our nuclear bomb secrets in the 1940s and 1950s. The possibilities of what we stand to lose in an all-out cyber war -- our individual and national security among them -- are just as chilling. Powerful and convincing, Cyber War begins the critical debate about the next great threat to national security.

Reviews

Easy to Read...... and Scary!, April 15, 2010

The best I've read on the topic, April 21, 2010

A description of how national rivalries will be implemented in the future, April 14, 2010

The War of the Future, April 13, 2010

worth reading, but with a big grain of salt, August 6, 2010
Clarke and Knake's book is important if for no other reason than, as they note, "there are few books on cyber war." Thus, their treatment of the issue will likely remain the most relevant text in the field for some time to come. They define cyber war as "actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption" and they argue that such actions are on the rise. And they also claim that the U.S. has the most to lose if and when a major cyber war breaks out, since we are now so utterly dependent upon digital technologies and networks.

At their best, Clarke and Knake walk the reader through the mechanics of cyber war, who some of the key players and countries are who could engage in it, and identify what the costs of such of war would entail. Other times, however, the book suffers from a somewhat hysterical tone, as the authors are out here not just to describe cyber war, but to also issue a clarion call for regulatory action to combat it. A bigger problem with the book is the complete lack of reference material, footnotes, or even an index. If you're going to go around sounding like a couple of cyber-Jeremiahs, you really should include some reference material to back up your gloomy assertions of impending doom.

The authors go after ISPs and many other comapnies for supposedly not caring about cyber-security. In reality, those companies have powerful incentives to make sure their networks are relatively safe and secure to avoid costly attacks and retain customers who demand their online information and activities be trouble-free. And most ISPs take steps not just to guard against malware and other types of cyber attacks, but they also offer customers free (or cheap) security software as part of a growing suite of gratis services (anti-virus, parental controls, e-mail, etc).

Clarke and Knake would like to see government impose a fairly sweeping set of new rules on ISPs to better secure their networks against potential attacks. In true deputize-the-middleman fashion, they want ISPs to engage in a great deal more network monitoring (using deep-packet inspection techniques) under threat of legal sanction if things go wrong. They admit there are corresponding costs and privacy concerns, but largely dismiss them and essentially ask us to just get over those concerns in the name of a safer and more secure cyberspace. They do, however, say they would be willing to have a "Privacy and Civil Liberties Board" appointed "to ensure that neither the ISPs nor the government was illegal spying on us." I doubt that will soothe the fears of those who (like me) are fundamentally suspicious of government snooping.

Overall, Clarke and Knake have written a book that is worth reading, but suffers from hyperbolic rhetoric and a serious lack of documentation. Readers should also seek out other perspectives on cyber-security issues, which take a more reasoned approach to the issue.

Cyber War is interesting and informative...a good read!, April 18, 2010

Interesting And Relevent, March 28, 2010

things that go boomp i' the night, April 15, 2010

An important subject but suffers from lack of technical detail, May 3, 2010

Preventing The Predictable, April 3, 2010

Editorial Review

A complete how-to from two of the world’s top bloggers

Thousands of aspiring bloggers launch new blogs every day, hoping to boost their income. Without solid advice from experts, most will fail. This bestselling guide, now fully revised with new and updated tips and tricks from two of the world’s most successful bloggers, provides the step-by-step information bloggers need to turn their hobby into an income source or a fulltime career.

• Earning a solid income from blogging is possible, but tricky; this book details proven techniques and gives aspiring bloggers the tools to succeed
• Even novices will learn to choose a blog topic, analyze the market, set up a blog, promote it, and earn revenue
• Offers solid, step-by-step instruction on how bloggers make money, why niches matter, how to use essential blogging tools and take advantage of social media and content aggregators, what a successful blog post should include, how to optimize advertising, and much more

Written by two fulltime professional bloggers, the updated edition of ProBlogger tells you exactly how to launch and maintain a blog that makes money. ... Read more

Reviews

Blogging for bucks is just another small business. Think it, plan it, do it, and benefit from it., May 20, 2008

I loved this book. It is the first one I have read that actually explains how blogging can be used to make money directly. Most books I have read, and what I have experienced, indicate that blogging is not something to be done to make money directly.

In this book the author explains that there are direct ways to make money from one's blog, and there are indirect ways.

Direct Monetization:
>>Advertising
>>Sponsorships
>>Affiliate commissions
>>Paid reviews

Indirect Monetization:
>>Freelance writing contracts
>>Book deals
>>Speaking engagements
>>Consulting opportunities
>>Service contracts
>>Sell your own products

After reading this book I am still a believer that blogs are not something to consider if you want to make money from them directly. However, it can be done! But probably not the way you would think. It's not done by creating a blog, i.e., one blog and making it popular online. It's done by creating many blogs. Creating an empire of blogs and getting well connected in the blogoshere does it. Writing on any topic that can generate advertisers, sponsorships, affiliate commissions, and paid reviews does it. One blog won't do it. Two blogs won't do it. But a lot of blogs creating little streams of income will do it.

The authors provide us with some lessons they have learned about blogging:

1. Blogging for income takes time
2. Take it one step at a time
3. It takes hard work and discipline
4. Follow your dreams

Does this sound familiar? It should if you regularly read books for entrepreneurs. Blogging for bucks is just another small business. Instead of writing content for an arsenal of magazines, you are writing an arsenal of content for various blogs. Instead of selling paper copies of writings, you are selling through Web 2.0. And you are using Web 2.0 strategies and tactics to make your blogs profitable.

If you have an interest in blogs, and you want two books on the subject that discuss blogs from completely different perspectives, then read this book and read "Blog Schmog" (ISBN: 078521576X). Both books are well written, organized, and sound. If you read both of these books, then you should have a pretty good idea of what blogs are all about, what you can do with them, and what you cannot do with them. 5 stars!

Definitely in the top one or two, May 1, 2008
This is the 12th book I've read on blogging. The books I've read have run the gamut from marketing brochures clothed in the covers of a book to real sources of valued information. This book is clearly in the latter category and I would place it in the top one or two positions as my favorite so far.

I appreciated the author's very quick overvew of "what is a blog". Blogs are very easy to understand and the authors who have gone on for 20+ pages just describing a blog have obviously just been shooting for page count. This author gets into the real meat of the topic very quickly. The brief overvier of professional blogging as opposed to just blogging in chapter 1 was also helpful.

From the first chapter on, it's all about getting your game on. You have to realize that blogging your way to a six-figure income does not happen overnight just like building an email list (in a valid way) that has hundreds of thousands of opt-in emails doesn't happen overnight. This book holds your hand along this prolonged journey.

Well-written but mostly covers the basics, June 24, 2008
A great book and I was already a big fan of Darren Rowse and his blog. He is a very successful pro blogger, a fine example to follow and learn from and having the 2 perspectives - different backgrounds, both end up at pro blogging and both very successful - is very effective. The book is easy to follow, written for anyone who even hasn't the basics of technology down, and has a reasonably good flow. I just wish it covered the tricks of the trade in much more depth, with examples, case studies, personal experience, and tips that you do not find anywhere else. It was a bit general for me. I am still glad I read it.

Great Reference for Bloggers, April 30, 2008
I have been looking forward to reading this book, and I couldn't wait to tear into the package as soon as UPS brought it to my door.

"ProBlogger" does not disappoint. Each page includes useful tips and techniques for building a successful blog. The chapters include:

Blogging for Money
Niche Blogging
Setting Up Your Blog
Blog Writing
Blog Income and Earning Strategies
Buying and Selling Blogs
Blog Networks
Blog Promotion and Marketing
Secrets of Successful Blogs
Creating Something Worthwhile

Reading this book from cover to cover will give you a solid education in blogging. It is the most comprehensive and realistic book I have seen on blogging, but it is not overwhelming. It covers everything from choosing a blogging platform and a topic, through design, what (and how often) to post, monetization strategies, interacting with your readers, using social media and getting links, and much, much more.

I found several tips that will help me focus my efforts and produce a better blog.

Once you finish reading the book, keep it near your computer so you can reference it frequently. This is not just a book for beginners. Even experienced bloggers will learn things they can use to gain readership and increase profits.

If you are going to buy a book about blogging, make it this one.

Cathy Stucker, [...]
Author of Mystery Shopper's Manual, 6th Edition

Good book for absolute beginners, boring read for existing bloggers, December 12, 2008
I've been blogging for a few years now casually and didn't find this book useful almost at all. The authors don't give away any of their "secrets" or point you at what they have had successes with personally, it's one giant introductory piece of writing that just tips you towards different things to try.

For someone that has a brand new blog and has never done it before, this is a good intro.

For someone looking to take their blogging to the next level, this book is a boring read and won't say anything you can't get online by Googling.

I'd also point out that this book is written exactly like the ProBlogger articles are written -- it gives you just enough to peak your interest in a subject, then never *actually* addresses the question conclusively. Their articles online are very much the same way except every one of those articles point you at buying their book.

Also don't expect to see any monetary numbers in this book either, they far away from giving indications of how much they make, made, could make or should make... you're on your own there if you are trying to get a feel for your site's value as well (trying to price CPM and such).

I'd suggest renaming the book to "ProBlogger: Getting Started with Blogging", this book is not full of secrets or any specifics that would indicate how you get a six-figure income.

Ways to make money from your blog, December 27, 2008
I'm new to blogging. Never had a blog until just recently.

I'm taking a small business class, and one of the things the teacher recommended was having a blog. Search engines love it, and its very easy to update.

I bought this book and a couple of books on wordpress, and what I like about this book is it covers ways to make money online.

I bought this great little wordpress book that showed me how to get online, and start blogging, and I started thinking, how can I make money, how can I get more of my customers to use my website, and see my special deals on my flowers.

This book gave me some good ideas.

The problem is, it is not as detailed as I would like. It is very much so not step-by-step. I'm a little confused at times. And I do not see how to implement this stuff.

I'm glad I got the book, I think it is the only thing like it, others recommended it in my class. But I just cant use it right now.

I think you should buy this book if you want to generate ideas on how to make money, but buy something else to learn how to do it (or pay someone)

The best place to start in Internet Business and Blogging, January 21, 2009
If you think you'd like to create an online presence through blogging to achieve any number of goals, this is the best place to start.

GOLDEN INFORMATION, June 3, 2008
If you want to make blogging your business, then this book is a must read. This book takes you step by step through all the options you will face when launching and monetizing a blog.

What I love BEST about this book is that Darren doesn't "sugar coat" his experience. His was NOT an overnight success story and he openly shares that information with the reader. His co-author, Chris Garret also doesn't sugar coat his experience either. Both are long time internet veterans whose success has been anything but overnight.

This book contains great information for every level of blogger. However, if you're expecting step-by-step idiot proof advice on how to make $100K a year your first year in blogging without working at it, then pass on buying this book.

Detailed, Thorough and Realistic Guide to Making Money Blogging, July 24, 2008
Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett have written a book that you should read if you're interested in blogging.

"Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income" is based on Darren's (and his partner Chris') personal experience building blog businesses to make $100,000/year or more.

Like Darren's popular Problogger blog, the book is casual, informative, supportive, and offers lots of specific strategies. It starts with the personal stories of how the 2 authors became successful bloggers. (Spoiler: They were not overnight successes and not everybody is going to make $100k!) This realistic approach continues throughout the book.

The Problogger book pays excellent attention to the business side of blogging. It helps the reader evaluate his/her own interests and potential approaches that may lead to lucrative blogging for that individual. The authors help you determine content niches appropriate to your expertise, select a software platform, and provide plenty of details on profitable writing strategies. (This includes screen shots and even details on getting paid by blogging for others instead of necessarily starting your own blog.)

Other business topics include marketing, SEO, and even buying and selling blog properties - much of which may be new to readers who are not already professional bloggers.

The book closes with heartfelt guidance to "Create Something Worthwhile". As blogging success stories themselves, Darren and Chris' argument to focus on continuously creating value for readers as a way to build your business is a positive and accurate message.

All of this practical, supportive detail combined with some inspirational support, make Problogger similar to my book Internet Riches: The Simple Money-Making Secrets of Online Millionaires, but focused specifically on how you can best make money by blogging.

The thorough review that Darren and Chris provide of different strategies behind starting a successful blog make a valuable contribution to the emerging library of e-business texts.

Highly recommended - especially if you are new to the "business" of blogging. The Problogger book could be the virtual mentor you need to make it big as a blogger.

Excellent cautionary book for those whose eyes are bigger than their reach, June 15, 2008
The two authors of this book repeatedly warn would-be professional bloggers that it takes a great deal of hard work (besides luck) to even hope to make a decent living with a blog. The authors explicitly warn of the dangers of thinking that this is something that anyone can do.

On the other hand, the authors share valuable information to help people who understand what the commitment must be in order to possibly grow a "successful" money-making blog. This is one of those books that you read a second time because there's so much good information in it. -- Phyllis Zimbler Miller ... Read more

Editorial Review

Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of thirty-four. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, and Oblivion for, literally, days. If you are reading this flap copy, the same thing can probably be said of you, or of someone you know.
 
Until recently, Bissell was somewhat reluctant to admit to his passion for games. In this, he is not alone. Millions of adults spend hours every week playing video games, and the industry itself now reliably outearns Hollywood. But the wider culture seems to regard video games as, at best, well designed if mindless entertainment.
 
Extra Lives is an impassioned defense of this assailed and misunderstood art form. Bissell argues that we are in a golden age of gaming—but he also believes games could be even better. He offers a fascinating and often hilarious critique of the ways video games dazzle and, just as often, frustrate. Along the way, we get firsthand portraits of some of the best minds (Jonathan Blow, Clint Hocking, Cliff Bleszinski, Peter Molyneux) at work in video game design today, as well as a shattering and deeply moving final chapter that describes, in searing detail, Bissell’s descent into the world of Grand Theft Auto IV, a game whose themes mirror his own increasingly self-destructive compulsions.
 
Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is like no other book on the subject ever published. Whether you love video games, loathe video games, or are merely curious about why they are becoming the dominant popular art form of our time, Extra Lives is required reading. ... Read more

Reviews

A book for all seasons, April 28, 2010

So...why DO video games matter?, June 11, 2010

A great read on the emotion and theory of gaming, May 3, 2010

Investigation of video games as art - and part autobiography, May 31, 2010

Possibly one of the finest written works on videogames - no joke!, November 17, 2010

I'll refer my friends who laugh at my video game habit to this book, October 31, 2010

For gamers only, August 6, 2010

Good, but not for the non-gamer, really, June 17, 2010

Not for gamers..., September 11, 2010

Written by a gamer, for gamers!, June 26, 2010

Editorial Review

It's salty, smoky, and sweet. It can make almost any dish better. It's bacon, and it's the best meat ever!

In Bacon: A Love Story, popular bacon blogger Heather Lauer serves up a piping hot dish of fun and facts and explores the ins and outs of how bacon finds its way to your skillet . . . and what to do with it when it gets there.

Bacon: A Love Story features

Makin' Bacon
A tour of country-style bacon outfits and their time-honored curing methods and traditions. Includes tips for making your own signature cure.

Bacon Nation
Profiles of bacon-loving chefs across the country who incorporate the meat into their menus in increasingly innovative ways.

There's In This?
More than twenty delicious recipes for tons of bacon goodies like Bacon-Wrapped Tater Tots, BLT with caramelized bacon . . . plus a few surprises like Bacon Bloody Marys and Bacon Brownies.

Bacon 411
An extensive resource section on all things bacon.

Bacon fans, prepare to get your pig on!

Reviews

Lovely Book for a Bacon Lover!, May 12, 2009
From history to recipes this is a great companion for anyone who loves bacon or is looking to explore the diverse nature of everyone's favorite meat!

Hilarious!, September 11, 2009
My husband loves bacon and I bought this book for him after seeing an article about it in our local newspaper. He has never laughed so hard! And it's all so true!

Simply put - the Best of Bacon, May 12, 2009
This is a great book, all you ever wanted to know about bacon and then some! It'll be a classic!

A fun read for bacon-lovers, December 20, 2009
Bacon fans will definitely want to read all the odd stories, history, and modern uses of bacon in this fun, breezy read. I read it over the course of a few months, just picking it up here and there with a strip of bacon and a hefty glass of ice water, and it was fun to get some new ideas for how to eat bacon, and some definite ideas that I do NOT want to try (Paula Deen's bacon/ beef/ egg sandwich encased between two glazed donuts - EW!). All in all, a fun read for the bacon fans among us...

The only thing that would make this book better is if it came wrapped in bacon!, May 12, 2009
A fun and informative read that is a must have for every bacon connoisseur! Your coffee table will thank you.

Bacon: A Love Story, May 12, 2009
fact filled fun book - i'll be pulling out some of the great bacon facts and stories at my next party - likely while eating something wrapped in bacon!!

Needs Fat, September 18, 2010
When I bought this book I was thinking of "Seduced by Bacon", a terrific book. However, this one does not read near as well nor is it attractive. It does have a lot of interesting info about bacon, good for someone seriously into it maybe. However, it did not convey that sensuous, yummy appeal of bacon that is so in right now. I bought it as a gift book also and was disappointed at myself in actually giving it to someone but I certainly couldn't deal with two of them.... ... Read more

Editorial Review

A crisp, passionately argued answer to the question that everyone who's grown dependent on digital devices is asking: "Where's the rest of my life?"

At a time when we're all trying to make sense of our relentlessly connected lives, this revelatory book presents a bold new approach to the digital age. Part intellectual journey, part memoir, Hamlet's BlackBerry sets out to solve what William Powers calls the conundrum of connectedness. Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose an enormous burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave.

Hamlet's BlackBerry argues that we need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. To find it, Powers reaches into the past, uncovering a rich trove of ideas that have helped people manage and enjoy their connected lives for thousands of years. New technologies have always brought the mix of excitement and stress that we feel today. Drawing on some of history's most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, he shows that digital connectedness serves us best when it's balanced by its opposite, disconnectedness.

Using his own life as laboratory and object lesson, Powers demonstrates why this is the moment to revisit our relationship to screens and mobile technologies, and how profound the rewards of doing so can be. Lively, original, and entertaining, Hamlet's BlackBerry will challenge you to rethink your digital life.

Reviews

Information overload - time for intervention, June 1, 2010

Was Shakespeare an Early Adopter?, June 5, 2010

Great Ideas for Living a Balanced Life, June 14, 2010

A detailed discussion of the problem with a simple solution, June 15, 2010

If This Book Were Only Part II, It Would Be Quite Interesting, June 13, 2010

Living In A Fishbowl, August 4, 2010

How to disconnect wisely from hi-tech overload, May 29, 2010

Need a way out?, June 5, 2010

On having a good life in the digital age, August 25, 2010

Unplug and ENJOY!, August 17, 2010

Editorial Review

Inside the Games You Grew Up with but Never Forgot
With all the whiz, bang, pop, and shimmer of a glowing arcade. The Ultimate History of Video Games reveals everything you ever wanted to know and more about the unforgettable games that changed the world, the visionaries who made them, and the fanatics who played them. From the arcade to television and from the PC to the handheld device, video games have entraced kids at heart for nearly 30 years. And author and gaming historian Steven L. Kent has been there to record the craze from the very beginning.
This engrossing book tells the incredible tale of how this backroom novelty transformed into a cultural phenomenon. Through meticulous research and personal interviews with hundreds of industry luminaries, you'll read firsthand accounts of how yesterday's games like Space Invaders, Centipede, and Pac-Man helped create an arcade culture that defined a generation, and how today's empires like Sony, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts have galvanized a multibillion-dollar industry and a new generation of games. Inside, you'll discover:
�The video game that saved Nintendo from bankruptcy
�The serendipitous story of Pac-Man's design
�The misstep that helped topple Atari's $2 billion-a-year empire
�The coin shortage caused by Space Invaders
�The fascinating reasons behind the rise, fall, and rebirth of Sega
�And much more!
Entertaining, addictive, and as mesmerizing as the games it chronicles, this book is a must-have for anyone who's ever touched a joystick. ... Read more

Reviews

Outstanding. Extremely informative and deep., March 29, 2005
I've been playing video games for 20 years now. I began with the Atari, saw the market crash, grew up with Nintendo, and got caught up in the 90's proliferation of newer and hotter systems. I know a great deal about the industry, yet this book puts my knowledge to shame.

Exhaustively researched and crammed ridiculously full of information, anecdotes, and hundreds of direct quotes from every walk of video game life, this book is worth more than one read-through. My copy is well-worn because I find it so easy to take with me on plane trips and just start reading through at random points. It's written in a very friendly, conversational tone and engages you with its prose. The book is extremely interesting because the author is clearly interested in the subject himself. He manages to get the kind of details and answer the type of questions you'd want to know, yet stays very thorough and accurate throughout.

Loads of different subjects are covered, sometimes at great length: The bar where Pong was first tested. Nintendo's lawsuit against Galoob's Game Genie. Tengen illegally producing Nintendo games and the big N's forceful prosecution. The battles over Donkey Kong and Tetris. The founding of Electronic Arts. Sega's mid 90's dominance and slip of the cd based systems. The furor over Mortal Kombat. School shootings. I can't list enough, and I can't go on enough about it. This book is extremely comprehensive and covers the entire video game industry and all its major players chronologically from the 70s until the turn of the century. It's well-written, accurate (given all those direct insider quotes) and completely objective. One of the best things about it is the fact that it gives details of so many things from my video game youth, such as the first Nintendo commercials, as well as the good old days of parents rampaging through stores for a copy of the "low supply" games. Aside from interesting industry information, this book helped me reminisce.

I've read "Game Over" (the only book comparable to this one on the subject, though it centers on Nintendo), "Phoenix, the Fall and Rise of Videogames, "Masters of Doom", and several other video game books. Honestly, this one still entertains me after four years. Though it ends at about the dawn of the PS2 and Xbox, it covers so much history and gives so many informative, interesting, and humorous stories that it really does deserve the title "Ultimate". Forgive me for not being more objective, but I must shrug and stick to my story. At 500 pages, and with such a wealth of information about so many familiar faces, companies, and games, I just find this to be the best book on the subject without question. Absolutely worth checking out for any video game player.

Lives up to its name--a must-read, November 17, 2001
Combine Leonard Herman's accurate but dry Phoenix with the intimacy of David Sheff's Game Over and you've got The Ultimate History of Video Games, the best account of video game history to date. Numerous anecdotes from the people who made the games that made history--from Atari's Al Alcorn and Nolan Bushnell through to Square's Hironobu Sakaguchi and Sony's Kaz Hirai--give the book an personal, friendly tone. Gamers should note that this is a reprinted but noticably improved version of Kent's self-published The First Quarter, with a full index, more photographic examples, a more attractive layout, and the removal of all the confusing typos and minor errors (sadly, the original book's clever title was removed as well, but the amended facts are worth it). Ultimate History's conversational tone, broad scope, and authoritative direct quotes make it very compelling as a narrative but just as useful as a reference. Along with David Sheff's Game Over, it's an entertaining must-read for students of gaming history.

A Must-Buy for Gamers and a Must-Read for Businessmen, November 18, 2001
I love to read about video games, and I pretty much devour everything I can find on the subject. So I became excited when I heard about the release of this book, written by one of America's most beloved (and yet perennially controversial) video games journalists. Steve Kent's MSNBC, USA Today and Next Generation columns are always honest and a bit quirky, which is a good combination from my perspective.

When I buy books, especially ones with the word "ultimate" in the title, I expect a lot. This book, a properly edited and indexed version of Mr. Kent's self-published "The First Quarter," absolutely delivers on its title. As a telling of history, The Ultimate History of Video Games is not pretentious, nor is it heavily opinionated, and those are among its greatest assets. The approach: interview nearly every major decision-maker involved in video gaming and let their words tell the 25-plus-year story of the industry.

And Ultimate History actually tells the WHOLE story. It's not just about Nintendo. It's not just about 10 years worth of old arcade games. It covers everything -- from before the dawn of video games to just before the releases of the Xbox and Gamecube. Plus it does so without pulling any punches. It's a big thick book with a lot of previously undisclosed information. Fans of The First Quarter will even find some surprising new additions inside, too.

This is the sort of book you stay up all night reading and then consult again whenever you're talking with your friends. And it's also the sort of book that ANY person considering a career in video games, especially the gaming business, really has to read. These are the reasons it rates a "buy" instead of a "borrow" or a "skim." I keep a copy on my shelf at work.

A history of Atari, plus some other stuff, October 21, 2003
This is really two books in one. The first half is a detailed history of the rise and fall of Atari. It is chock full of interesting details, and rightly focuses on the fascinating personalities who drove the company that did more than any other to take video games mainstream. The author's years of covering the industry and these people paid dividends in this section.

By contrast, the second half of the book, which mainly covers the rise of Sega, Nintendo and Sony, feels rushed and is far less comprehensive. Many part felt like rewrites of news articles, rehashing history rather than bestowing new insights. I don't want to sound too harsh, because this is a good overview, but this section falls short compared with the high standards set by the Atari history.

I also have a couple format quibbles. Many direct quotes are offset from the main text in bold. This is distracting. Some quotes simply repeat what had just been stated in regular text. I understand the need to back up assertions with quotes, but some of the comments are bland and don't really add anything. Other sections begin with quotes that are only tangentially related to the ensuing text, or were from speakers who don't make further appearances or whose comments are not elaborated on. Another complaint is the use of excerpted passages from contemporary news articles that don't give the source up front but force the reader to look up footnotes in the back. If a passage is important enough to offset from the main text, the reader should be told right away who wrote it and in what publication.

Also, I thought the title was slightly misleading, since this is more a history of the video game *industry* rather than of video games themselves. A subtle distinction perhaps, but while there is background on certain titles, especially from the Atari years, I had expected more on actual games.

Overall, the book is informative and interesting though I believe it falls short of its lofty claim of being an "ultimate" history.

Captivating read for all who have loved video games, May 30, 2004
Having been born in 1984, I was open to the video game revolution when Nintendo became a big influence. My life revolved around near worship of Nintendo of America. From buying the systems, games, and gear, I totally immersed myself in the culture of video games. However, I was not aware of the heritage that had preceded my birth and the work and love that had gone into the video game industry. This book has opened my eyes to that and has given me a much greater appreciation for the work done by the great geniuses in the video game industry.

Kent begins with the major pinball companies to give you a grounding in the leading companies that would eventually move into the coin-op and then consumer video game businesses. The book chronicals the making of games from a ragtag group of MIT students to Nolan Bushnell's grand experience of Atari and then all the way up to Microsoft proposing X-Box. The major focus of this book is the early years of gaming. Much of the material chronicals the work of the early Coin-op and console manufacturers. This is a very refreshing view of the industry, showing the original roots of the market.

I definitely suggest this book. Kent's light-hearted style is augmented by the thoroughness of his work. This book is brimming with direct quotes from the major players in the gaming industry. If you have had an interest in the work done to make the video game industry as popular as it is, this book is a definite suggestion. Read away!

Great book on video game history!, August 28, 2005
I found this book very easy to read and entertaining. It gives a wonderful insight into the video game industry circa early 1970's through around 2000. Wonderful interviews with the "big hitters" of the industry including the creator of Atari, the person who headed up Nintendo of America, etc. Well worth the price.

The Ultimate History of Video Games, November 14, 2001
Weighing in at a massive 608 pages, Steven L. Kent's THE ULTIMATE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES is nothing less than glorious, especially for admitted coin-op history junkies such as myself. Kent chooses to lay his foundation in Chapter 1 with the early rise of coin-op devices and the introduction of David Gottlieb's BAFFLE BALL bagatelle table in 1931. Devoting his opening pages to coin-op's roots was a wise move, he pays homage while giving the reader a greater sense of how we got here. From then on it's full tilt into the video realm. Kent utilized Leonard Herman's excellent book, PHOENIX: THE FALL & RISE OF VIDEOGAMES as one of his research cornerstones, but don't let that fool you. The author logged over 500(!) interviews with the small, medium and large insiders of the video game landscape. It's an amazing feat which yields an abundance of quotes from luminaries such as Al Alcorn, Dave Theurer, Nolan Bushnell, Ray Kassar, Ed Rotberg, Maysaya Nakamura, Dave Thiel, Joel Hochberg, Dave Rosen and Ed Logg (just to name a few!). From the corporate movers and shakers to the programming geniuses, Kent leaves no voice unheard. He also weaves the intricate origination tales of giant game makers such as Sega. Few realize it was founded by Americans living in Japan and that "Sega" is not a Japanese word. It's an abbreviation of the original company, SErvice GAmes founded in 1952. Kent's THE ULTIMATE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES delves deep into the explosive home console successes and failures as well as the coin-operated arena. Even today, former CEOs marvel at the days when they could do no wrong. Just ask former Atari topper Ray Kassar who is still awestruck by the 1982 sales figures of Pac-Man cartridges. Twelve million went out the door that year, setting a retail sales record. In short, THE ULTIMATE HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES is a book whose timing couldn't be better. With video game hobbyists and players residing throughout the world, they've come to know that the machines of their childhood are now treasured collectibles. Rest assured, there will be more and more books forthcoming about the video game phenomenon. For now, Stephen L. Kent has delivered us pixel-eyed vidiots a wondrous tome that peeks "behind the screens."

Fascinating look at the entire video game industry, October 25, 2001
Anybody over the age of 18 will remember the classic arcade games that raked in billions of dollars in quarters (or later, their video console and home computer translations) - Donkey Kong, Defender, Asteroids, Battlezone, Space Invaders - the list is almost endless. And the companies that produced them were as well known as major league sports teams: Atari, Midway, Williams, Electronic Arts, Commodore, etc.

This book chronicles the fascinating story of the birth and evolution of the video game industry, from the pre-video arcade games to the modern high res computer games. It's large, about 600 pages,but it reads more like a fast paced novel than an encyclopedia, and contains just enough information to keep the narration interesting without getting bogged down in minor details.

As the title indicates, this book covers it all, and it does so with an insider's perspective, Kent having reconstructed the full story from hundreds of interviews with the major players. It's also full of interesting insights and anecdotes about the games, their creators, and the founders and movers of the industry. Ever wonder where the strange title Donkey Kong came from? Did you know there was a military training version of Battlezone? Which video game resurrected a dying arcade industry?

The business, as well as the technical, side of the video game history is covered, with stories about the wheeling and dealing that took place to launch and maintain the companies, and the reasons behind the successes and failures.

I thought I'd read a little bit of this book at a time, but ended up plowing through it, it was that engrossing.

WOW, April 3, 2002
Steve Kent's book truly is the "Ultimate" history of video games. I was not bored once and kept finding myself craving more with each passing page. I bought The Ultimate History of Video Games primarily to learn about Atari, Commodore, and Nintendo in the 1980s, a time from which I have many fond video game memories, but no real knowledge of the industry and the people behind it. What I received was a book that easily met my expectations and provided so much more. From the beginnings of Pinball (which Kent actually makes a very interesting read) to the launch of the Playstation 2 and the development of the Gamecube and X-Box, this book has it all.

I assumed that I already knew a lot about the 1990s video game industry. I WAS WRONG. There is a ton of information in this book. Pick you subject, person, or game system and they are probably in here and you will almost definitely learn something you didn't know, even if you are an expert on a particular subject. Thank you Steve Kent!

The Ultimate History of Video Games aka The First Quarter, November 8, 2001
This is a very good book on the entire history of the video game craze up to the present. Lots of good interviews and tid-bits to enjoy. I just wish that I had known that this book is essentially the EXACT SAME BOOK as Kent's other title, "The First Quarter" which was published last year I believe. It even says this on the title page of this book. Since I already have that book and have already read it cover to cover, this book really doesn't add much more to the equation. Still worth reading, though ... Read more

Editorial Review

The bestselling guide to WordPress, fully updated for newest version of WordPress

WordPress, the popular, free blogging platform, has been updated with new features and improvements. Bloggers who are new to WordPress will learn to take full advantage of its flexibility and usability with the advice in this friendly guide.

Previous editions have sold nearly 50,000 copies, and interest in blogging continues to explode.

• WordPress is a state-of-the-art blog platform that emphasizes aesthetics, Web standards, and usability
• WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition covers both the free-hosted WordPress.com version and WordPress.org, which requires users to purchase Web hosting services
• Written by an expert who works directly with the developers and cofounder of WordPress
• Shows readers how to set up and maintain a blog with WordPress and how to use all the new features

Like its earlier editions, WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition helps bloggers quickly and easily take advantage of everything this popular blogging tool has to offer. ... Read more

Reviews

Still the very best for learning and using WordPress, August 6, 2010
This is Lisa Sabin-Wilson's 3rd Edition of her bedrock "WordPress For Dummies". I own all three editions and each is thicker and filled with more knowledge than the prior edition. If anyone asks me how to learn, manage and use WordPress, this is what I recommend.

It is truly A through Z coverage. Sabin-Wilson is, in my opinion, one of the best technical writers around. Her language is clear, uncluttered and free of artifice.

Logically enough, she begins at the very beginning explaining what WordPress can do for you. To her credit, she doesn't hold it out as a panacea for all that ails you. She doesn't promise you that you'll earn millions or will win public office. Sabin-Wilson simply tells you how to set up your blog and then moves progressively into the minutiae of creating and managing a WordPress blog. (And yes, operating a blog is like most other things in the world - a series of small details that you must repeatedly (i.e., daily or thereabouts) attend to. In fact, one of the chapters is appropriately entitled "Establishing Your Blog Routine".

"Wordpress For Dummies" is thorough. The WordPress Dashboard is explained as is the use and, perhaps more importantly, the customization of themes. (With WordPress, your blog or website can look however you like it, but getting it right is not necessarily simple.)

Another important Sabin-Wilson covers in some detail is using WordPress as a Content Management System. Although she treats it in some detail, I personally wish that she would write a book on this subject alone.

In all, none of the other WordPress books I've read - and there are quite a few of them - measure up to the standard that Linda Sabin-Wilson has set in all three editions of "WordPress For Dummies". Each edition has been extensively revised to stay as current as possible with WordPress releases.

A total delight to read and use, it is, in my opinion, the gold standard for learning, managing and using WordPress.

Jerry

Not for This Dummy, October 23, 2010
I bought the book about three weeks ago and still have my WordPress site hanging by threads, not completed. Although I'm not really a computer "Dummy," I found the book either too simple or not well organized ... and I really don't know which. All I know is after spending several hours trying to figure out how to configure the basic template recommended to do what I wanted to do, I lost interest and decided to "think about it." I found the explanations too often reverted to a programming language which I didn't speak: It looked like I needed to study PHP as a prerequisite.

The book seems to be full of good information, but at least for me, it was hard to convert all the info into a workable WordPress site. I'm sure it could be done, but I'm looking for another book.

Not up to "Dummies" standards. Much better books out there., November 20, 2010
If you want to learn WordPress there are much better written and more complete books out there. This book is severely disappointing in a way that Dummies books rarely are. The author touts herself as an expert and there's no doubt she knows some things about WordPress. However, her writing is not that great and you'll find that you're left with more questions about certain things about WordPress than you were before you read the book.

If you want to hear about how great Lisa is, buy the book. She uses every opportunity to showcase her site and things she's done, tooting her horn as only people who are self-described "experts" tend to do. Again, I am not used to this type of flagrant self-promotion in a Dummies book. It's annoying.

The author has capitalized on the fact that she "wrote the book" on WordPress, but it isn't written well or that great of a book.

Check out "Digging Into WordPress" or "WordPress Bible" for truly great resources.

Beginners would be wise to take advantage of the free WordPress codex: it's the official manual for WordPress. There are specific sections for people new to WordPress there. Also check out WordPress.tv for how-to videos.

THE starting place for WordPress - learn from the expert, September 9, 2010
I've had the distinct pleasure of getting to know Lisa Sabin-Wilson personally, read WordPress for Dummies, and can honestly say her expertise and talent is so rich that I'd highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to use WordPress.

It's a great starting place for those just getting into WordPress, but also a great reference for your bookshelf for those of us who have used WP for a while now.

As an active (and successful) web designer using WordPress, she's in code almost every day and I've leaned on her knowledge and asked her input and feedback many, many times for our own WP projects.

WordPress continues to get better and better with each new version and seeing the third edition of WordPress for Dummies is exciting to know that THE guide for WordPress is also keeping up with this awesome software.

We've given Lisa's book out to many of our community members, and yes, even my own mom, and will do the same with this new updated version.

I treasure my signed copy. And because she frequently speaks at WordCamps around the US, you can get yours too.

IF you are new to wordpress then this is your book, September 22, 2010
This is a good reference book for me. I had 2 sites built using Word Press and did not know much about the inner workings or even how to change stuff outside of what I learned myself. Have not finished book yet but have already picked up some great information. If you are new to wordpress this is a great one for you.

Learn Wordpress from the best!, October 5, 2010
Before buying this book I examined at least a half dozen of the competitors. Many of which are twice the price of WordPress for Dummies. Lisa Sabin-Wilson's latest WordPress for Dummies book is the best book available at this time for WordPress newbies.

It starts in the right place choosing how you will publish / host WordPress. Wilson explains both options with the pro's and con's of each. It's an important decision and the information she provides is helpful.

Chapters are sequenced properly with few references to something written in an earlier chapter. This kept me from flipping back and forth between chapters to setup this or that feature on my website. Each chapter provides explanations, examples, and sidebars with the "why this is important" information. Read all of it, you'll be glad you did.

Included in the book are detailed instructions for creating your own template, extending WordPress as a CMS platform and more. This takes you beyond a WordPress newbie.

If you intend to build a website you should strongly consider WordPress. It's a mature application and easy to learn. Unlike many opensource applications the documentation is great and it has been designed from the ground up with the the end user in mind as opposed to other applications which are designed to be used by a programmer,IT pro or advanced user.

After reading this book I have a website setup with a static front page, replete with many features found at very expensive hard to create websites. I am pleased with what the book has helped me create. I have used the book to tweak / troubleshoot something on my website as I continue to add to it. I think it will be a reference for me for some time.

I find the "Dummy" part of the title of the book series offensive but you would be hard pressed (pun intended) to find a better WordPress book than "WordPress for Dummies" by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. It makes learning something new fun!

Difficult to understand, October 27, 2010
Lisa Sabin Wilson did not write this book for the novice. The book is difficult to follow, having you jump back and forth to learn basic tasks. It is written more for one who has experience in designing websites or blogs.
Wilson should have referenced to a basic sample blog on the internet that she could have created and then using the book, walked the reader through each step of the dashboard as to how the site or blog was created. Her basic information is already on the WordPress site. The illustrations are difficult to read.
I can not recommend this book.
I have used many ....For Dummies books over the years and this is the poorest I have purchased in teaching one who wants to set up a blog. She is a BIG fan of WordPress and it comes through in the book.
Most learners just want to set up a blog, and do not want to become expert bloggers as this book spends many pages on.

WP is great, December 3, 2010
WP is great and this book is just the right tool to learn from.
The Codex is complete and confusing. This book smooths out the
bumps and takes the shortcuts to positive outcomes.
THanks Lisa!!!!
Mike

Great book!, November 26, 2010
This is just what I needed to clear up the dark areas! Wonderful book, and not "just" for dummies either. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

The Final Word (incl review of critics), September 23, 2000
As you may know, this book is considered THE Javascript book. What's makes the book worthwhile is it's fine discussion of Javascript's innerworkings. If you really want learn how Javascript's objects, functions, and data type handling work, then this is the book for you. The criticisms of this book fall into three catagories: 1) "Not for beginners". Yes, this book is not intended for people who have never studied object oriented programming. But that doesn't make it a 2 star book! Even beginners, if they are serious enough, will eventually need some clues about how Javascript really works. 2) "It's outdated". Again, yes; the reference section, and some of the browser dependant discussion is clearly outdated; BUT that still does not make this an outdated book! The author's in-depth explanation of Javascript innerworkings may never become outdated, and that alone is what makes this book worthwhile. 3) "Not enough examples". This is the only criticism that I

actually agree with, and therefore the 4, instead of 5 stars. Not only can this book benefit from additional small examples, but the author's explanations are sometimes lacking, or even worse, missing. On a few examples, he basically says, "This is worthy of study. Go ahead and study it." Sorry, I expect more from my books, than a grumpy professor in a university lecture hall, nearing the end of class.

Hard core Javascript theory.....at last., August 24, 2000
After trying to learn javascript from the visual series "javascript for the world wide web, 3rd ed" (and being thoroughly disappointed), I finally have found a book that describes the fundamentals of the javascript language in detail. This book explains from an academic perspective the rules, usage, and syntax of javascript. It leads the reader into the depths of how javascript implements an object-oriented paradigm without getting too esoteric. It can be difficult reading at times, but the true nature of javascript programming is not that of a simple little scripting language as some would have you believe. The coding examples could have been better, with more full-sized scripts showing the language in action instead of the numerous 1-4 line code snipets. The one big distraction I noticed was the seemingly constant references to netscape navigator, and all the bugs present in older versions of that browser. Unfortunately, this dated the book and tended to highlight a bias when the author would have been better off staying with the academic focus. Even still, the majority of the theory is unaffected by nav or ie, and the reference section is essential for any serious javascript developer. It is noted that this book was copyright 1998, so "cutting edge" javascript extensions will not be included, but the fundamental theory behind the language remains intact. With the combination of this book (theory and reference) and the visual series book (cutesy web page tricks), I can finally get on with the task of finishing my web site.

The best Javascript reference, April 27, 2000
This is the best Javascript reference available.

The book is divided into three sections. The first covers "Core Javascript", defining the language itself with only occasional references to how you might use it in a browser. This initially seemed to me to be a roundabout way to approach the language--why wouldn't you want to explain it by examples in a web page? However, after becoming more familiar with the language I think it was absolutely the right decision, since it avoids confusing the document object model (see below for more about that) with the language itself, a confusion common among beginners.

At the end of the first section (which developers experienced in other languages can skim, but shouldn't skip) you know what Javascript code looks like and how to do assignments, define functions, and so on. The second section, "Client-side Javascript", is where examples start to show up that you can really run in a test page of your own. The examples are good and there are plenty of them.

The heart of the second section is the discussion of the document object model. After some introductory discussion, covering windows and frames and some of the more common Javascript tasks, there's an overview of the DOM. Subsequent chapters cover it in more detail. This organization makes it pretty easy to find what you need without even resorting to the index. For example, I find the forms chapter, and the chapter on how to use cookies to save state, to be very useful, and easy to find information in.

Finally, there's a reference section at the back. This is the most valuable section once you're well on your way with the language, and is what I now use most of all. It's comprehensive and clearly written.

The book does have one weakness, which has been noted by other reviewers here: it doesn't have a "cookbook" section, showing you how to do common tasks with Javascript. This is a serious omission because of the nature of Javascript usage. Very often a webmaster for a small non-profit or a small business will decide they want to do a rollover, or add an alert for form validation failures, or something similar. Users like this need something equivalent to the "Perl Cookbook"; a "How to . . ." section that gives you an example close to what you need.

Despite this caveat, however, this is still the best book around: an excellent reference, and a great way to learn the language.

Wow - THE best Javascript book available!, August 23, 1998
I purchased the Netscape One Developer's Guide thinking it would provide answers to my Javascript questions - it answered very few, unfortunately. The 'Guide' doesn't begin to approach the ease of use, thoroughness or amount of information contained in "Javascript: The Definitive Guide". Javascript is as completely covered as it can be (with the free-flowing nature of WWW specifications, its hard to keep track of all the changes). I found the descriptions and examples informative, clear and concise and kinda fun sometimes. The layed back nature of the writing won't scare off novice coders/web developers and yet doesn't turn off more advanced developers. The book is cut in half - the first provides an introduction into Javascript and discusses its more important subjects while the second is a complete reference section for Javascript 1.2. It specifically treats the differences between Netscape and Internet Explorer whereas the Netscape One guide left that up to the reader to figure out - an oversight which relegates the Netscape One Developer's Handbook to the dusty bookshelf (way in the back). If you're doing web development and need to use Javascript - this is probably the only book you'll need. If you're doing web development and you're not using Javascript - you NEED this book - it will show you what you can do with simple client-side scripts.

An excellent JavaScript reference!, September 28, 2000
This is the book to get if you want a reference guide to JavaScript! The book starts by going through language syntax (complete beginners - take note!), then covers working with objects in detail. The book then puts it all into context by covering all aspects of working with browsers - specifically how to manage and manipulate page content and the browser window itself to enhance display (eg. rollovers) and add client-side functionality (eg. form validation).

The next section covers the document object model (browser DOM), and for me this was the only disappointment in the book. While I found every other part of the book thorough and informative, I found the DOM chapter a bit light-on.

However, this is easily compensated for with the excellent reference section at the back of the book which details each object, explains its purpose, and describes all of its properties and methods. The book is almost worth its price just for this reference, and I almost always turn to the back first!

As a web developer / back-end programmer, this is one of four books I always keep with me! The other three are "HTML: The Difinitive Guide", "ASP in a nutshell" and an SQL reference.

The Title Says it all, January 23, 2000
This book was perfect as a "learning" book and a refernce manual. I read the book, learning by examples and excellent descriptions. Now I use the book almost everyday as a reference when I develope web applications. Roughly half of the book is a complete reference manual focusing on the syntax, methods, and properties of ALL of the Javascript components. The reference is organized by Object making it easy to find what you want. There are also plenty of cross references for easy indexing. O'Reilly has done it again.

The K&R of Javascript, December 23, 1999
The book has a very good introduction to the core of client side javascript. It is a great reference for coming back to those things that you get kind of rusty on like "regular expressions" and "creating your own objects". The rest of the book is an incredibly comprehensive reference which goes into considerable detail. It's the kind of detail that a compiler manual goes into. I would prefer a version with indexes like a study bible. If you read most of this book you wont have to go around copying other peoples code snippets because you'll be to busy making up your own scripting libraries. I wish that this author would add about 300 pages on Server Side JScripting and Active Server Pages. I'm sure he could take the magic out of it in a way that most programmers could pickup in a matter of hours.

The 5th Edition was well worth the wait, August 18, 2006
First off, this is a review of the 5th edition, released August 1, 2006. All other reviews prior to that date are talking about previous editions of this book, which are considerably different than the current one.

The reason the various editions of this book have been so good over the last ten years is probably because they have all been written by the same author, David Flanagan, who seems to really know his audience. Part one of the book is pretty much the same as in the previous edition. It acts as a complete tutorial on the language, taking you all the way from basic language constructs into object-oriented programming and finally basic scripting.

Where things get really interesting and cutting edge is in part two of the book, "Client-Side Javascript". Most of the examples we've seen so far, while legal JavaScript code, had no particular context - they were JavaScript fragments that ran in no specified environment. Chapters 13 and 14, "Javascript in Web Browsers", and "Scripting Browser Windows" provide that context. This begins with a conceptual introduction to the web browser programming environment and basic client-side JavaScript concepts. Next, it discusses how to embed JavaScript code within HTML documents so it can run in a web browser. Finally, the chapter goes into detail about how JavaScript programs are executed in a web browser.

Next, the book turns its attention to the Document Object Model (DOM). Client-side JavaScript exists to turn static HTML documents into interactive programs. It is the Document object that gives JavaScript interactive access to the content of otherwise static documents. In addition to the properties that provide information about a document as a whole, the Document object has a number of very important properties that provide information about document content. Chapter 15 explains all of these issues.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a technology intended for use by graphic designers or anyone concerned with the precise visual display of HTML documents. It is of interest to client-side JavaScript programmers because the document object model allows the styles that are applied to the individual elements of a document to be scripted. Used together, CSS and JavaScript enable a variety of visual effects loosely referred to as Dynamic HTML (DHTML). This is the subject of chapter 16, "Cascading Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML".

Interactive JavaScript programs use an event-driven programming model. In this style of programming, the web browser generates an event whenever something interesting happens to the document or to some element of it. For example, the web browser generates an event when it finishes loading a document, when the user moves the mouse over a hyperlink, or when the user clicks on the Submit button of a form. If a JavaScript application cares about a particular type of event for a particular document element, it can register an event handler - a JavaScript function or snippet of code - for that type of event on the element of interest. Then, when that particular event occurs, the browser invokes the handler code. All applications with graphical user interfaces are designed this way: they sit around waiting for the user to do something interesting (i.e., they wait for events to occur) and then they respond. Chapter 17, "Events and Event Handling", discusses these issues.

The use of HTML forms is basic to almost all JavaScript programs. Chapter 18, "Forms and Form Elements", explains the details of programming with forms in JavaScript. It is assumed that you are already somewhat familiar with the creation of HTML forms and with the input elements that they contain. If not, you may want to refer to a good book on HTML.

The Document object contains a property named "cookie" that, on the surface, appears to be a simple string value. A cookie is a small amount of named data stored by the web browser and associated with a particular web page or web site. Cookies serve to give the web browser a memory, so that scripts and server-side programs can use data that was input on one page in another page, or so the browser can recall user preferences or other state variables when the user leaves a page and then returns. Thus, the cookie property controls a very important feature of the web browser and is important enough to warrant a complete chapter of its own, "Cookies and Client-Side Persistence".

Internet Explorer on Windows, Safari on Mac OS-X, Mozilla on all platforms, Konqueror in KDE, IceBrowser on Java, and Opera on all platforms provide a method for client side Javascript to make HTTP requests. From humble beginnings as an oddly named object with few admirers, it's blossomed to be the core technology in something called AJAX. The object in question is called the XMLHTTPRequest object, and it is not limited to being used with XML. It can request or send any type of document, although dealing with binary streams can be problematical in Javascript. This chapter, "Scripting HTTP", covers these issues. Since AJAX actually stands for "Asynchronous Javascript and XML", the next chapter discusses Javascript and XML working together.

The final two chapters of part two of the book are very cool and interesting to me, but might not be of interest to the standard professional Javascript programmer, since it deals with client-side graphics and movies using Javascript. This includes working with VML, SVG, graphics and Java, and finally using Javascript with Flash 8. Parts three and four form a reference section for Javascript, including the various methods and their usages.

The source code is well commented and explained, as in all previous editions, and is available for download from the book's website. This book is a great instructive textbook and reference on Javascript. I highly recommend it.

Pretty Good, Probably Great for C/C++/Java Programmer, August 10, 2000
An overall good book. The reference section is the strongest point, however the though of simply reading a reference section is terrifying.

If you already know one of the languages, or are familiar with Object oriented Programming, this is very probably the book for you.

If you have not programmed before, do a little online reading, then try this book. if your willing to put the time in, you will learn a lot.

Before reading this I knew HTML, and had read some online tutorials of JavaScript, which classifies me somewhere outside the realm of programmer. The first 11 chapters were rather abstract and somewhat confusing, and would have been moreso if i had not already read up a little.

But then it started making sense. you don't really learn how to write any script for real until about chapter 12, but then it really starts making sense. I had to read the beginning again after finishing the book, but now I feel like I have a firm handle on the topic.

Throughout the book many (many) referneces are made to the similarities and ifferences between JScript and C/C++/Java. There is an entire chapter devouted to java and Jscript working together.

Another great one from Flanagan, September 10, 2004
If you're already an experienced programmer, it can be frustrating trying to find a good book on JavaScript (aka JScript, aka ECMAScript, aka ECMA-262). A lot of books out there are aimed at HTML developers, maybe even graphic designers. Many such users have little or no real programming experience, and maybe no real interest. Books for that audience are user-friendly, filled with useful examples, and low on scary-sounding technical terms. In other words, almost useless.

Flanagan has good credentials as a technical writer, and as a highly technical writer. He really knows what software engineers look for - trust me, it's not what a graphic designer looks for.

This starts with a clear, methodical description of the language. Flanagan goes through all the language basics, pointing out where JavaScript differs form languages like Java, C#, or C++. The differences are numerous. For example, JavaScript has typed data, but not typed variables. It's object oriented, but doesn't have classes. It's an interpreted language, not compiled, and that opens up generative programming possibilities that reflection APIs can't approach.

After the language itself, Flanagan presents it in the client-side HTML context, where it appears most often. That's about 20% of the book. It goes over all the common HTML features, and shows how JavaScript can add dynamics or configurability to most HTML features. The last part of this section discusses XML and the DOM model. It does not yet discuss the E4X standard, ECMAScript for XML, the new ECMA-357 standard. As of this writing, the standard has only been out for three months, though. I'm sure Flanagan will catch up to it soon.

The book's remaining three sections cover the language's basic APIs, the APIs needed in the client-side HTML context, and the DOM model. The first two are fundamental to any non-trivial use of the language, the last is the programming model that gives access to XML or XHTML in a rational, predictable way.

JavaScript has a number of very different user communities, with different needs when it comes to language documentation. This isn't a cut&paster's book, and is nothing at all like a training guide. It's a reference manual. If you're a serious techie, then this is the book for you.

//wiredweird ... Read more

Editorial Review

In his first book since the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure, The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.

Throughout the text are clear technological and mathematical explanations, and portrayals of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world's most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history, what drives it, and how private that e-mail you just sent really is.
... Read more

Reviews

Neatly illustrates the impact of encryption on history, November 2, 1999
Before Singh's "Code Book" came on the scene, the only other book I knew about is Kahn's "Codebreakers". I don't have the time to read such a large text as Kahn's book, so I was very pleased when this book became available.

Singh has done a very nice job of demonstrating how deep an impact cryptography has on history. He opens the book by recounting Mary Queen of Scots' conspiracy to have Queen Elizabeth murdered and how she attempted to use encryption to cloak her intentions. It was a very exciting way to open the book.

Singh has found the right combination of technical detail, historical detail, and character development.

Singh's explanation of how the German WWII Enigma functioned is exceptional. He made it very easy (and fun) to understand.

Singh's last chapter is also very neat on the subject of quantum cryptography. Though I have a BS in computer science, I'm no physics genius and Singh did a nice job of making (what I consider) difficult physics concepts easy to understand and of showing how they can be applied to modern cryptography.

Although I don't know a thing about "Fermat's last theorem", I've been so pleased with Singh's writing style that I'm considering reading that book also just to see what it is all about.

If you like codes/ciphers and want to read about their impact on history without reading a thousand pages then get this book. You'll be happy you did.

A great read and a little more than just codes, December 12, 1999
Mr. Singh traces the history of cryptography from its recorded inception in roman times up through current applications. While all of the chapters held my interest it was Mr. Singh's work in chapters 4 through 6 that I feel deserve particular note.

Chapter 4 deals with the war effort at Bletchley Park and the work on the Engima machine. Here Mr.Singh adds an additional dimension by providing some insight into the work of Alan Turning, the development of Colossus, the first (now reported) electronic programmable computer and the unrecognized cryptanalysts who broke Ultra and the other codes of WWII. Chapter 6 brings us up to present day cryptographic issues from RSA and PGP to philosophical issues of personal privacy in modern society with web centric commerce and online book reviews. At each step in the process Singh successfully combines the elements of a technical treatise with a human values and features. For those wanting to go a little further under the hood and look at the processes and algorithms in some of the codes mentioned in the text, several appendices at the end of the book should fill that yearning. I found the book informative and enjoyable to read.

Compelling material wrapped in interesting stories, March 29, 2000
It took me a while to finding to the time to read this because I was expecting a rather dry book on cryptography. The subject was somewhat interesting to me, but I didn't feel like plodding through a long book on the subject.

Once I started reading I realized The Code Book was totally different. Singh takes you on a tour of the history of cryptography through the history of the world. You will find that cryptography was an unexpected key element in several historical events.

Through the entire history, Singh's writing is exceptionally clear and easy to follow. The material in the book is accessible to all levels of reader -- even those with no knowledge of cryptography.

Enjoyable, never boring, ultimately a little light, November 17, 2000
If you like to read about how secrets, the protection of and the finding out, have affected and altered the course of history, this is a fun book to read. If you're interested in a very good, enjoyable overview of the history of secrets, this is a good book.

Ultimately, though, it's light. The history of cryptography is enormous, and a book this size can only summarize. If you're into the history, then The Codebreakers by David Kahn is the more definitive work.

If you're more interested in the personal stories of people involved with code making or breaking, there are some excellent works, such as Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks, which give you more detail of particular people or times.

If you're interested in modern-day issues with computer security and encryption, Bruce Schneier has written two outstanding books, one for the programmer and one for the layman, detailing modern cryptographic techniques and security issues.

And if you're interested in a gripping fictional work, they don't come better than The Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

That's not to take away from Singh's book at all. It's extremely enjoyable, and it was a perfect vacation read for me. If you're not seriously into cryptography the way I am, you might not find the above books interesting, but find Singh absolutely fascinating. Recommended to anyone.

Smoothly flowing, lots of anecdotes and personalities, September 25, 1999
Not really in any substantive sense a history of cryptography, this book gives one very much the same feeling as if watching a well done television documentary. This is not particularly surprising, as the author works on programs such as PBS' "Nova" in his day job. This makes the book an easy and pleasant read, but it chooses its focus rather oddly, often emphasizing persons and events out of all logical proportion to their real historical significance. In fairness, the author does concede that he is not attempting to write a history of cryptography, as that has already been done comprehensively by others, especially David Kahn ("The Codebreakers," recently reprinted). While Americans are given inappropriately little attention until the chapter on public-key cryptography -- I think William F. Friedman is mentioned once in passing, and Herbert O. Yardley perhaps twice -- the selection of subject matter is a refreshing change from the usual stories that are rehashed over and over in most books on cryptography. It is particularly nice to see the British WWII cryptanalytic efforts at Bletchley Park being given their due, since Bletchley's people such as Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers have had to suffer from their work being kept secret until several years after Kahn's and most of the other principal histories had been written. The acknowledgement of the early Polish effort with German Enigma which made the British effort possible is also comparatively rare, again mostly because of the secrecy which until recently surrounded the matter, but it is likewise long overdue. I was also pleased to see the chapter on the decipherment of Cretan Linear B, which the late Otto Neugebauer -- probably then the world's leading expert on Babylonian Cuneiform and no slouch himself -- told me made his work look like "child's play." (Neugebauer's popular "The Exact Sciences in Antiquity" is still in print, too.) It would have been nice to see some discussion about the success with which cryptanalytic techniques similar to those used in connection with Linear B have been applied within just the last few years to Mayan inscriptions, but one cannot have everything. The tie-in between Linear B and Navajo "code talkers," both of which depended upon cultural influences, was a most unusual perspective. Interestingly, there is some hint at the same basic issue in connection with Judaism, where Martin Hellman's experiences with anti-semitism are discussed and it is noted that the critical insight which led to the RSA cryptographic system occurred immediately following a Passover seder where Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adelman were all present together. Ultimately, the approach of the book is, in "human drama" television documentary style, to choose some story or person as respresentative of each aspect of cryptography in history, including some of world-making historical importance such as the execution of Mary Queen of Scots or the breaking of German ciphers in WWII, some of great importance within their field such as the work on Linear B, and some of entirely marginal importance other than as curiositis such as the Beale letters. The technical explanations of cryptographic systems such as the Vignere Cipher are excellent and should be clear to anyone, and are much better done than in the average book on the subject. Where the explanation would be so involved as to be distracting to the reader, the technical issues are relegated to one of the many appendices as is appropriate. Even the discussions of speculative techniques such as quantum-state transmission are relatively easy to follow. Overall, I cannot recommend this book as a serious history of the subject -- read Kahn for that -- but it is a fun and entertaining read for someone knowledgable and a respectable introduction for anyone else fascinated with cryptography and cryptanalysis.

wonderful historical account of the use of cryptography, February 9, 2008
As a mathematician in the early 1970s, I saw many advertisements recruiting mathematicians for the CIA. I knew that it had to do with cryptography and number theory but it was all very mysterious and since I never got a job with them I didn't see precisely how the disciplines fit together. As Singh describes the discover of the RSA coding system it all becomes very clear.
The story he tells is particularly interesting because it starts with the ancient Romans and the decoding of the conspiracy messages of Mary Queen of Scots in Elizabethian England.

Singh also wrote an very interesting account in layman's terms of the discoveries that led to the proof of Fermat's last theorem. That skill is also demonstrated in this book where the key concepts of cryptgraphy are discussed as they were developed through history. The uses of cryptography in World War I and World War II are brought out. We learn of the men in England at Bletchley Park who were able to decypher the German Enigma Machine and play a major role in the latter success of the allies. The gain of information from the U boats enabled the Americans to transport supplies and soldiers to Europe to fight the war. The U boats were very successful at destroying American ships prior to the breaking of the code.

It is interesting that after the war the academic community in the United States solved the problem of key passing for computer networks and developed the RSA code. These discovery were developed earlier and independently in England at their secret agency the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) based on the unheralded ideas of James Ellis. Their work was kept secret until the late 1990s when their achievements were finally brought to light.

The book also discusses the archaeological work on the Rosetta Stone and Linear B. This work uncovered the meaning of the hieroglyphics and showed that the Minoans language was a form of Greek. The techniques were very much akin to deciphering code.

Also of interest is the Navajo code talkers who used their language as an unbreakable code during the war in the Pacific in World War II.

Recent developments and conjectures about future breakthroughs are discussed in the last few chapters. The book provides very useful information about other books and interesting web sites including one that allows you to download Zimmerman's Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) which provides RSA level security.

An excellent introduction to the topic, September 28, 2000
The Code Book, Simon Singh's introduction to the race between cryptologists and cryptanalists, code-makers and code-breakers, is probably one of the most pleasant popular science reads of the year.

The first chapter starts with the description of the monoalphabetic substitution ciphers, its failure and the consequence of the latter, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. From then we proceed to polyalphabetic ciphers, the Vigenere Cipher and the Babbage's method of breaking it; as an added bonus Singh has thrown in the three Beale papers, allegedly leading to over a ton of gold buried in the hills of Virginia. The third chapter describes the path Germans made between the world wars, from the Zimmerman note disaster to the construction of Enigma. Closely related to it is the next chapter, a story about the Poles and the Brits cracking Enigma.

The fifth chapter is a step aside: on deciphering texts that are not purposely encrypted, but simply written in extinct languages and scripts, like Egyptian hieroglyphics or Minoan Linear B script. From then on, we are probably already on the more familiar territory; the discovery and re-discovery of public key cryptography, and its application in Phil Zimmerman's PGP. The last chapter tries to provide a peek into the future: quantum computers that can break currently uncrackable codes in linear time, and quantum encryption, which cannot be broken without violating the laws of physics.

Apart from the Beale treasure papers, Singh added another gem for aspiring cryptanalists: they can test what they have learned with ten ciphertexts in the appendix, and the author promised to pay 10.000 GBP to the first one who solves all of them. And Singh proved to be a good teacher: to date, nine stages out of ten are solved already (the last one involves a massive amount of CPU time).

True, David Kahn's Codebreakers contains a more exhaustive treatment of the historic development of cryptography, and Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography will provide you with a knowledge needed by a working specialist. However, if you share just a casual interest in the area, this is the book for you. It's much more than just stories about people involved in the cryptography and other related trivia - you will be surprised that Singh's lucid explanations will actually make you understand how the algorithms work.

Sound, Entertaining, and Informative Introduction, October 23, 2000
The fine popular science writer Simon Singh (author of _Fermat's Enigma_, about the proving of Fermat's Last "Theorem") has just put out _The Code Book_, a quick survey of the basics of cryptography from a historical perspective.

Singh's book is an enjoyable and well-done overview of the basics of cryptography. He begins with a story about how Mary Queen of Scots was doomed because her crypto was bad, and continues up to the present day. He describes the 16th Century French Vigenere cipher, World War I cryptography, including the Zimmerman telegram, and lots of detail about Enigma. There is a fascinating side branch into the related issue of deciphering ancient languages. He does a good job describing the Rosetta Stone and the work in deciphering that, and a good job discussing Linear B. The concluding chapters discuss computer based cryptography, particularly the Data Encryption Standard, Public-key Cryptography, the RSA algorithm, and Pretty Good Privacy. I was a bit disappointed in the final chapter, on Quantum Cryptography, which didn't explain things as clearly as I would have liked. Their is also a set of ciphers in the back, and a contest for readers to try to decode them.

Singh does a good job describing the characters involved, in the best tradition of popular science. And though I've known a bit about this subject for some time, he still taught me lots of new stuff. I was particularly surprised to learn that British researchers had invented both Public-key Cryptography and an equivalent to RSA several years before the more famous inventor, but that the British government had classified their work, denying the researchers credit for their discoveries.

This is a sound, entertaining, and informative introduction to the basics of cryptography.

Fun fun fun, July 1, 2000
A combination of easy-to-understand explanations, history, suspense, and just plain fun made this the best history book I've ever read. Singh starts with Mary Queen of Scots and her fumbled plot to kill Queen Elizabeth. The history behind the plot was explained, and then he back-tracked all the way to the fifth century b.c. to give us an idea of where it all started from in documented history. The author's style of creating suspense surrounding a particular event and then giving you history on that event before he tells you the outcome was an excellent way to keep a non history buff glued to the pages.

The characters were well written within the history. Instead of falling asleep to a list of names and dates, I was saddened to read of the fate of Alan Turing when they discovered his secret, all fired up about the buried treasure surrounding the Beale Papers, and laughing at the quandry of the poor Navajos who were 'captured' by Americans who mistook them for Japanese spies.

The other high quality aspect was the cryptography explanations. Never having known much about cryptography beyond the absolute basics behind Enigma, I found it extremely easy to understand his explanations of how this or that cypher worked, and how historical figures went about cracking them. Even his explanations of how Enigma worked were simple to comprehend. Based on his explanations I'm confident I could create coded messages myself - maybe even decipher one!

It probably has a lot more to do with my ignorance of Egyptology than the authors explanations, but the only portion of the book I didn't like was the explanation of how the hieroglyphs were deciphered. The explanations themselves were clear, but it seemed to me there were some assumptions made about why people in ancient Egypt did certain things that just seemed a bit off to me. The author was clear enough and accurate enough about everything else that I'm assuming the fault is mine, and I'll be reading some Egyptian history sometime soon.

In the top echelon of "non-fiction for pleasure" books, December 1, 1999
I'm on a non-fiction kick at the moment, and I'm loving reading books that tell you about anything science-y. Of the stack of 5 or 6 I've recently read, this one was the best. Firstly, Singh is an excellent writer - the writing just draws you in. Secondly, you learn how easy it is to crack the sorts of codes people write to each other as kids. And thirdly, I loved learning how Elizabeth 1st's spymaster outwitted Mary Queen of Scots by using decryption. Other books in my stack (which weren't quite as good) included The Perfect Storm, and The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Now, both of these were great. But that just shows how good I think The Code Book is. ... Read more